For those of you who don't know, "stealth" is when you live as your target gender (in my case, male) without disclosing that you are trans. I've never been stealth before. I'm not on testosterone so I assume that I don't pass. And in most cases, I don't. So recently I spent a lot of time arguing that trans women make too many assumptions about how well trans men pass. One of the comments recently was something like "short hair, binding, and swagger and trans men pass, even pre-T." I still stand by my assertion that this isn't necessarily true.
I forgot something, though, and that's that my name is legally changed. So swagger (not that I have too much of it), binding, short hair, and an obvious male name I guess do make me pass. I've never had that happen before and it's been a source of great stress for me. Namely bathrooms. I don't usually use men's restrooms because I freak out in them, but I'm not going to disclose that I'm trans and I'm certainly not going to say I'm female, so I realized I needed to start using them. There is one single-use men's restroom that I tend to use when I can, but there have been times when I used the multi-use.
And here's the story. I needed to go and could not make it to the single. So I--as nonchalantly as possible--walk into the men's multi-use, don't look at anybody, and get into the stall. I'm sitting there being neurotic, there were other people pissing and sitting so I wasn't worried about that (a lot of guys do), and somehow I broke my zipper. Like, legit broke about five of the teeth off, so I can't even fix it.
So I had to keep my shirt untucked for the rest of the day to hide my shame. That was around noon. My class ended at 8:30 at night.
Now that the strangeness is wearing off, though, I'm looking at the "bright side." In addition to the whole "holy crap, nobody knows" euphoria going on, it gives me a lot of incentive to actually hone my mannerisms and how I dress to avoid having people suspect anything. Right now? It appears they don't. I'm pretty good at noticing the little double-takes people try to hide when they learn I'm the gender they don't think I am (whether I'm going as male or hiding as female that day), and I haven't really seen any of those.
One thing I'm pretty sure about, though, and that's that people think I'm a total flamer. At least one girl has decided to try claiming me as her gay friend. I'm not gay. But I'm gay enough, so I guess I'll just live with it.
