Thursday, April 06, 2006

Strange Life Situations


I'm learning that the older I get, the stranger life becomes. Lately N and I crossed paths with a woman (man???) who has a gender issue. Clearly, she is a woman, but she dresses in men's suits, goes by a man's name and refers to herself, in the third person, as "he". She attends a group N and I also frequent and has taken to using the men's bathroom there, prompting discomfort in many of the men who also use this particular group for support. She has incited the hostility of at least one of the men, who told her in no uncertain terms that she shouldn't be using the men's bathroom. All of this is strange, but the issue that's really bothering me is not her sexual confusion but that fact that lately her personality has taken a rather hostile turn. At first, she seemed to be a kind, fairly calm person. Lately, however, a great deal of anger has been bubbling up from her being, creating emotional outbursts in the meetings and leading me to want to shy away from having any close contact with her. I don't care to expose our daughter to that sort of negative energy at this point in her young life. Having attended both art school and cosmetology school, I've enjoyed friendships with plenty of gay men. Additionally, I've had friends who were lesbians. On some level, I can understand them; I'm straight, but I can acknowledge that women are beautiful, and, certainly, I love men (although, except for my husband, in a purely platonic way). But, I'm about as girly as girls come. It used to offend me when friends would point that out, but it's true. I love clothes, I love make up, I love coloring my hair (sorry, no natural blondes here!). I love being outdoors, hate sitting still, love hanging with the guys, but I love being a girl. I can't relate to wanting to wear men's clothing (puhleeze), having a guy's name (I changed my name because I wanted something more feminine in sound and meaning and also desired a name that gave a nod to my Irish roots). So, I can't relate to this woman on a level of understanding her desire to live a straight lifestyle as a man. I don't see how that can happen for her, but that's none of my business. I just hope that when I see her (she's taken a liking to my husband and I and this has offered her the comfortability to tell us about sexual things which neither of us wants to hear about, especially in front of our daughter) I can detach in a gentle, kind way. I don't want to hurt her feelings, but I don't want to hear about her collection of toys or anything like that. It just skeeves me out.

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