One in Every Crowd (15 page)

I RETURNED HOME FROM DOING my anti-bullying storytelling show in a couple of small towns just in time to open the newspaper and read about right-wing Christian radio hosts and rogue school board members targeting programs like Out in Schools, and “pro-family” organizations taking out full-page ads full of hate and fear-mongering in national publications. I had just performed for 1,500 kids in two days in four schools, and as always, I walked away feeling inspired and full of hope for the world. These kids are smarter and savvier than those on the right seem willing or able to give them credit for, and they are certainly wiser and worldlier than I remember being when I was fifteen. That’s the funny thing: that the evangelicals are so convinced that their kids will grow up heterosexual as long as they never cross paths with a living, breathing homosexual. It is like they actually believe that if they can somehow just keep us homos out of schools, or at least keep us in the closet, and keep our lives and our language out of the curriculum, that all of their children will magically grow up to be straight. What they forget is that no matter what kind of self-hatred and misinformed poison they whisper into their kids’ ears, an estimated ten percent of them will grow up to be some sort of queer, and that the real question is whether they will somehow find the strength to survive and thrive and live truthfully despite what they were taught to believe about themselves. So in some ways, every time I swallow the lump in my throat and step through those streaky glass doors at the front of every high school I enter, I am there for those kids the most. Because I know that despite how scary high school can be for some kids, for others high school is the only place they might have any hope of acceptance and support, because they are not going to find it at home. The thing is, I don’t even say the word queer while I am there. I just tell stories. Stories about growing up with my cousins and little sister, stories about my Gran. Stories about Wendy, Tracy, Sandra, Jeanie, and Kerri-Anne, the mean girls back at my own high school. My show is designed to get the kids talking about bullies and teen suicide and how the way we treat each other impacts the kind of people we are, and the kind of adults we might become. I don’t need to say the word queer, because it is not about being queer. It is about each and every one of them feeling safe enough to access their education, and about respecting difference. Because I remember who got picked on in school. The fat kids, the dumb kids, the slow kids, the fast kids, the poor kids, the boys who threw like girls, the kids who weren’t white, the quiet kids, the religious kids. That’s right, Christian right: your kids. The ones who weren’t allowed to go on dates, go to dances, wear makeup or the right clothes, watch the right television shows, or listen to the right music. When I was in school, the most risqué show on TV was
Dallas
and the dangerous band was Judas Priest; today, maybe it is more like
True Blood
and Gaga, but the song remains the same. I got this email when I got home, from one of the teachers: “We have had a two-year leadership focus on inclusiveness and anti-bullying and your presentation supported this so beautifully … getting to that part of the audience that may not always be listening or be open to receiving a message. This week we had three different groups come up to our admin to report an incident where a vulnerable grade 10 boy was being harassed by older boys in the lounge. Our principal called all six of the boys up for a visit. They were banned from the lounge for a week and the public shaming was a lovely thing. Two of the boys called in were not harassing the boy, but they didn’t say anything. They apologized for not speaking up when they knew they should have and could have stopped the ugly affair. Anyway, we think that your performance may have been fresh on our students’ minds and something very good came out of a potentially very bad situation. So thank you again.” I also want to share part of a letter I got from a student after a show I did in a high school last spring: “Heeeyyy. So you came to my school today. After I got in the car with my older brother and told him all about you, and he goes, Britney, you are one of those girls. I yelled at him and then gave him the silent treatment the whole way back, but when I wasn’t talking to him I was thinking yah, I am one. I’m a Kerri-Anne or a Wendy or that volleyball team. But I don’t want to be. So I just wanted to say thanks. Because even though I have all this respect for you, I don’t always give that respect to other people, and I know I am not going to change this second cause it’s been a part of me since I can remember, but I’m going to be conscious of it all the time now. I know you are making an impact I just wanted to be the extra email that helps motivate you to never quit.” So, Britney, I promise you, I will never quit. And evangelicals, you might want to think again about stopping folks like me from doing this kind of work in schools. Because chances are pretty good that it might just be your kid who is going to need us to be there for them the most.

IMAGINE A PAIR OF BOOTS. A sturdy, well-made, kind of nondescript pair of boots. They are functional enough, but kind of plain. Imagine that you live in a country where every citizen is issued this one pair of boots at birth, and that there are no other footwear options permitted by law. If you grow out of or wear through the soles of these government-issued boots, you may trade them in for a new pair, always identical to your old ones. Imagine that everyone you know wears these very same boots without question or complaint.

Now imagine that your right foot is two sizes bigger than your left one. That no matter what you do, one boot will chafe and the other will slip, and both will cause blisters. When you mention your discomfort you are told that odd-sized pairs of boots are forbidden, because they cause confusion and excess paperwork. It is explained to you that this footwear system works perfectly for everyone else, and reminded that there are people in other countries who have no boots at all. You are beat up in grade three because none of the other kids have ever seen feet like yours. The teacher tells you that you should probably just learn to keep your boots on. Your parents blame each other. You end up wearing an extra sock on your small foot to compensate, and never go to swimming pools. Your feet sweat profusely in the summer and you always undress in the dark. You hate your feet but need them to walk and stand up on. You hate your boots even more. You dream of things that look like sandals and moccasins, but you have no words for them. You learn things will be easier for you if you just never talk about your feet. One time on the bus, you spot a guy with the exact same limp as you, but you pretend not to see him. He watches you limp off at your bus stop and then looks the other way. You can’t stop thinking about the man with the limp for weeks. You are nineteen years old and until that day on the bus you thought you were the only person in the country who couldn’t fit into their boots.

I have always felt this way about gender pronouns, that ‘she’ pinches a little and ‘he’ slips off me too easily. I’m often asked by well-intentioned people which pronoun I prefer, and I always say the same thing: that I don’t really have a preference, that neither pronoun really fits, but thank you for asking, all the same. Then I tell them they can call it like they see it, or mix it up a little if they wish. Or, they can try to avoid using he or she altogether. I suggest this even though I am fully aware of the fact it is almost impossible to talk about anything other than yourself or inanimate objects without using a gender-specific pronoun. It is especially hard at gigs, when the poor host has to get up and introduce me to the audience. No matter which pronoun the host goes with, there is always someone cringing in the crowd, convinced that an uncomfortable mistake has just been made. I know it would be easier if I just picked a pronoun and stuck with it, but that would be a compromise made for the comfort of everyone else but me. A decision that would inevitably leave me with a blister, or even a nasty rash.

Perfect strangers have been asking me if I am a boy or a girl as far back as I can remember. Not all of them are polite about it. Some are just curious, others ask me like they have every right to know, as if my ambiguity is a personal insult to their otherwise completely understandable reality. Few of them seem to realize they have just interrupted my day to demand I give someone I don’t know personal information they don’t really need to sell me a movie ticket or a newspaper. I have learned the hard way to just answer the question politely, so they don’t think I’m rude. In my braver days, when someone asked if I was a boy or a girl, I would say something flip and witty, like ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘makes you wonder, doesn’t it?,’ but I found that this type of tactic greatly increased the chances I would get the living shit kicked out of me, so I eventually knocked it off. Then I went through a phase where I would answer calmly, and then casually ask them something equally as personal, such as did they have chest hair or were they satisfied with the size of their penis or were those their real breasts, just so they would see how it felt, but this proved just as ineffective.

A couple of months ago, as I was smoking outside the Anza Club after a gig, this young guy marched up and interrupted the person I was talking with to ask me if I was a man or a woman. I told him I was a primarily estrogen-based organism, and then I asked him the exact same question. He took two steps back and dropped his jaw.

“I’m a man.” He seemed visibly shaken by the thought of any other option.

“And were you just born male?” I continued, winking at my companion.

“Well, yeah, of course I was.”

“How interesting.” I lit another smoke.

“Hard to tell these days,” my friend chimed in.

The guy walked off, looking confused and kind of vulnerable.

“He’s gone home to grow a moustache,” my buddy said, then laughed and shook his head.

I thought about it all later, how the guy’s ego had crumpled right in front of us, just because a stranger had questioned his masculinity. How scared he was of not being a real man, how easy it had been to take him down. It dawned on me that if you’ve never had a blister, then you’ll never have a callus, either. And if your soles are too soft, then you are fucked if you ever lose your boots.

LATELY, I FIND MYSELF ON THE ROAD A LOT. Sleeping in beds unfamiliar with the shape of me, feeling along strange walls to find the light switch in the dark, waking up to wonder at a ceiling I’ve never seen before in the daylight of a different town. Wearing the same pair of pants for a week and running my fingers over a calling card in my pocket when I miss my girlfriend. Airports and a highway and little tiny soaps and MapQuest and gas stations. Always gas stations. Because no matter where you are, or how much time you have until you have to be somewhere else, you’re going to need gas, and someone always has to pee.

For me, the best gas station bathroom scenario is the single stall version with the sturdy locking door with a sign on it that says men-slash-women and you don’t have to ask for the key first. These are the bathrooms most conducive to a stress-free urination experience for me, for a number of reasons. First of all, you don’t need to ask for the key. The key for the gas station bathroom is usually somewhat wet for some reason, which I find unsanitary and disturbing, and is invariably tied or chained to a filthy germ-harbouring item which is hard to pocket or lose, such as a piece of hockey stick, a giant spoon, or a tire iron. You have to ask for the key from the either bored or harried and always underpaid guy behind the counter, and if there are two keys, one for the men’s and another for the women’s, then the cashier has either no time if there’s a line-up, or lots of time if things are slow, to decide for himself which key he should give you. Keep in mind that he is probably feeling unfulfilled about the fact that he is ten times more likely to be robbed at gunpoint than he is to get a raise anytime in the near future, and that deciding which washroom he thinks I should be using is the most arbitrary power he’s been afforded by this job since he caught that twelve-year-old shoplifting condoms and decided not to call the cops because at least the kid was stealing responsibly.

So this is the guy who gets to decide where I get to pee. I have learned that asking for the key to a specific washroom will only increase the odds that he will notice that the washroom I wish to enter doesn’t match the hair or voice or footwear of the person he sees in front of him. Maybe he couldn’t care less which bathroom I use, maybe his favourite sister is a dyke. But maybe his religion tells him I am damned, maybe him and his buddies almost killed a guy once for wearing a pink shirt, just in case he was a queer, just for fun. Maybe he dreamt of kissing his best friend all the way through grade eight but never did, and he hates me because I remind him of how scared he is of his own insides. I cannot know his mind. I am in a strange town, and something about me doesn’t fit. It is best if I let him decide, and don’t draw attention, or alert anyone in the line-up behind me to his conundrum.

Maybe you think I’m just paranoid, that I’m a drama queen, or that I exaggerate to make a point. I would say good for you, that your gender or skin colour or economic status have allowed you to feel safe enough that you still think the rest of us are making this stuff up. You probably don’t even realize how lucky you are to be able to not believe me when I tell you that every time I have to pee in a public bathroom, I also take a risk that someone will take issue with me being somewhere they believe to be the wrong room, depending on who they mistook me to be, based solely on that first quick glance.

I can pray for a wheelchair-accessible stall, or one of the ungendered kind with a baby-changing station in it, and then hope that no one is waiting there when I slip out, able-bodied and childless. I can cross my fingers that the ladies’ room is empty, or bolt quietly for the closest empty stall if it is not. Unfortunately, women and children have many good reasons to fear what they think is a man in their washroom. I have learned to be more forgiving of their concern, and try not to take any hostility too personally. They only want the same thing I’m looking for: a safe place to pull down their pants and pee.

I can hold my nose and use the men’s room, and if I’m lucky there will be a seat on the toilet and the guy who comes in to use the urinal will not be the type who hates slightly effeminate men, or the type who likes them a little too much. In men’s rooms, I squat and pee quickly, simultaneously relieved and terrified when I am alone.

Over the years I have learned a few techniques, like not drinking pop in movie theatres and holding my pee for probably unhealthy lengths of time. I do my best to be polite and non-confrontational, even when confronted or questioned rudely. One of my favourite methods is to enter the women’s room with a preferably ladylike companion who has been previously instructed to ask me if I have a tampon in my purse. I answer her in the most demure and feminine tone I can muster that I left my purse in the car, or that I’m down to my last pantyliner, and dash for the first open stall.

Just recently, I accidentally improvised the perfect line to deliver to the nice but confused lady that I often meet on my way out of the gas station bathroom. She was standing with her hand on the half-open door, looking first at me and then again at the sign that said “Women” on it. She was in her later sixties, and I felt bad that I had startled her, or maybe made her feel even for a moment that she was lost, or in the men’s room, where she might not be safe. That I had scared an old woman with a full bladder. Again.

“It’s okay,” I smiled and said calmly. “It’s just me.”