Creative Non-Fiction
Emotional Blue Balls, Customer Service, the Police, and a Piss-Stained Confederate Monument?
Thoroughly addressing my #1 biggest FAQ as a trans man
CW: None of this is safe for children. It would be Rated R for gratuitous sexual innuendo that will only get worse, if you are a police officer. Pearl clutching is guaranteed. This writing contains racist incidents my wife has experienced and enthusiastically encouraged me to tell you about for their entertainment, along with a self-described liberal “Karen” who wanted to defund the police on her terms only. It includes violence in many forms. It is not safe for work unless your boss is okay with you laughing at horrible things that aren’t funny at all. BDSM is referenced multiple times in passing for one police officer, in particular, to feel seen and heard. There are copious references to alleged bodily functions.
Full credit for part of the title of this writing goes to KP_the_writer, who had this conversation with me, which you can read, along with the whole article and comments section of this post very slowly, if you need additional insight into how our trans masculine brains work. I really want to meet the trans masculine anthropologist who is now preparing to strap in and spend hours analyzing our conversations. At least that would suggest that someone was actually studying our people for the betterment of society.
If you are a “normal” person, this title is not clickbait at all!
I promise to release the full, hot, emotional load today after a respectable 15 minutes of working up to it slowly, exactly the way you want it. Feel free to skip to the sections that intrigue you, if you’re an instant gratification kind of person. I’ve got something for everybody here.
Unfortunately, if you’re a police officer reading this, the title may or may not be clickbait.
I can neither confirm nor deny at this time. If you are a police officer, you will just need to keep reading to find out whether a crime has been committed. If you are a police officer, and you do not yet have a Medium account to find out whether a crime has been committed by one or more persons in this story, please first visit this link to become a paying member of the Medium and support my writing. Turnabout for your daily telemarketing calls is fair play.
Also, if you are a police officer, there may or may not be something violently pornographic to make it worth your while to keep reading, even if you can’t find someone to arrest by the end of this story. I know what you’re into; I’ve researched. I’m not a selfish person. I’ll make sure there’s something in this for you, too. Romance is not dead. I’m nothing, if not a gentleman.
1. Customer Service
I knew I had to tell this story about repressed anger when I came across this quote from Jessica Wildfire’s article that you should also read, called Here’s Why Nobody Wants to Work Anymore (Again):
If you’ve ever worked at a restaurant, you’re used to getting blamed for things. It’s practically part of the job. Some customers don’t even want good service. They want lousy service, so they can complain. That’s what they’re really paying for. Somewhere deep down inside, they know it. There’s almost nothing more American.
I used to work in a restaurant, along with several similar odd jobs, so I have a superpower talent for remaining calm while being continuously blamed and yelled at for things that I didn’t do.
In the slightly higher-paying jobs that came later in my life, there was a theme of my nonchalant attitude in these situations shocking my coworkers.
For example, on my first day in a receptionist gig, a customer accused me of stealing her child’s birth certificate because I wear glasses, and she remembered that the last person to handle that paperwork wore glasses, too, before vanishing on a quest to steal her child’s identity and ruin their life forever.
I was saved from an investigation threatening a possible arrest by the fact that the paperwork was lost the week before I arrived. Not missing a beat, I acknowledged the possibility that I had made an error and began calmly asking questions, until it became clear that she had delivered the paperwork to the wrong office on another floor, causing it to be temporarily lost. The angry, yelling customer never apologized. When she left, I said to my new coworker calmly, “Well, I’m glad we figured that out for her.” This is what customer service jobs in America teach you to do. They teach you how to repress anger in an airlocked container for storage somewhere in the bottom of a single cell of your amygdala. They teach you how to smile under stress.
The #1 most frequently asked question that I get from both cis and trans people about me being a trans man on Testosterone is: “Are you feeling angrier than before?” That’s usually the main concern, said as if all cis people were the pinnacles of emotional stability in comparison to the average trans man.
To quote Wildfire’s article again:
This country has a ton of repressed anger and anxiety.
If I’m feeling a little angrier than usual, I’m definitely not alone.
But am I really feeling angrier than usual? Am I?
Being a trans man meant losing meaningful blood family connections in the fallout of uncovering an understandable mistake that a doctor made the day my wife and I were each born. Our psychic baby doctors were 0 for 2, it seems. As a very family-oriented man who grew up hearing continuous echoes of the refrain, ‘blood is thicker than water,’ alongside a promise that the only thing I could do to get disowned was kill a family member, this was stressful, to say the least.
I guess roping off free access to my manly uterus counted as killing a family member.
Surely now is absolutely the most objective opportunity to assess whether moving from Venus to Mars by shooting myself in the leg with Man Juice weekly would be the only thing that could possibly make me angry, as a trans man.
I can’t think of any other reason, but I’ve got time. I won’t be getting a reminder to clock in under my deadname again at a job that values diversity and inclusion for at least another solid 2 hours, so let’s fully flesh out whether I’m angrier because of that chemical trip I’m taking from Venus to Mars. Let’s review the last two years in my trans masculine perspective.
Am I really feeling angrier than usual?
2. The Police
The other day, at my job, I received training from a police officer on how to prevent violence in my field.
This police officer was the human embodiment of a microaggression. By the end, I was too impressed to be angry.
If I had a dime for every time he said that only women experience a particular kind of violence I experienced recently, I wouldn’t have to put this story behind a paywall to pay for my ongoing therapy. If that police officer is reading this, I hope he signed up for a medium account under my name. I earned my monthly support in that class.
The police officer informed me that we need to prevent this violence against women only because there is someone else in addition to women who do, on occasion, experience this terrible thing.
Who?
Me?
Nope!
Police officers!
Police officers are the real victims here, folx.
Violence against women only is the precursor to the real violence. It’s the foreplay, if you will. After a cold-blooded killer violently harms women only, they turn immediately to police officers with what they call a ‘God Complex’. Once they get a taste for killing women only, they immediately skip over the rest of us and go straight to the police to begin their serial killer choose your own adventure story!
But wait! There’s more! This police officer wanted us all to know the true cause for the senseless violence against women only.
Systemic indoctrination of white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchal, transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic, classist, and ablest violence?
The continuous arming of a population suffering from serious repressed anger?
Customer service culture?
No!
Obviously, this violence was caused by consensual BDSM porn!
The aforementioned violence surely didn’t exist before the invention of Only Fans. It began recently, just as everybody started watching violent pornography, especially during the Pandemic. Everybody except this poor police officer wants to watch nothing but dangerous fornication these days. This officer has been doing extensive research for professional purposes only, or so he tells us. He has been watching all of this BDSM porn and is absolutely horrified.
Horrified, I tell you!
According to this police officer, Women are consenting sometimes, on rare occasions, to allow this horrible stuff to happen to them on camera at the vile hands of men only, just to throw other women under the bus for their cold-hearted, wanton pleasure. Violence against women only is truly the fault of women who enthusiastically consent to be in porn. Nobody had better tell this poor cop to google the word Dominatrix, or he will get lost in 20 years of extensive research for professional purposes only!
Sorry, cops.
If you’ve made it this far, I’m going to make you read a little further to find out whether a crime has been committed. If you end your research now, you haven’t been thorough. You have to decide now if you were only in this for the violent pornography depicting rough fornication, or if you’re really doing your job. This is a judgment-free zone, if you want to tap out now. We’re all allowed to have our limits.
I want to check in with you, dear reader, like a good Domme allegedly would.
Has this been good for you so far? Are you alright? Are you breathing okay? Do you need to take a break? It’s okay to stop and make some peppermint tea to spit on your computer in the next section. We’re about to move on to some really inappropriate, rough stuff right now.
3. An Allegedly Piss-Stained Confederate Monument
Obviously, the events of this part of my story of explosive anger repression began in a swamp somewhere in Florida, where we went in a fruitless search for manatees. (Kitty Whitemore’s experience has taught me that it was probably fortunate that we didn’t find any.)
We should have believed our mutual lover when she told us she could be a ‘Karen’ sometimes. We thought she was being self-deprecating. After all, she was a liberal who frequently reminded us that she supports defunding the police and was rapidly ‘radicalizing’ and decolonizing her mind in every possible way. She had even read the book White Fragility and was in-the-know on this sort of thing. She was working on eradicating her inner white supremacist, like the best of us. We wrongly assumed that she was not having a ‘Karen’ day when we ventured forth with her into an isolated swamp environment in the middle of nowhere.
Nothing could possibly have gone wrong.
It was a lovely evening, with only a few mosquitos, when we unexpectedly came across a monument with a sign explaining its significance in promoting the institution of antebellum slavery.
I can neither confirm nor deny the events that followed intermittently, for legal reasons, but something may or may not have happened to that monument that may or may not have involved copious urination. The person(s) involved may or may not have been well-hydrated in preparation for the possibility of the appearance of such a monument to the fueling of antebellum slavery.
I can neither confirm nor deny the events that followed intermittently, for legal reasons, but something may or may not have happened to that monument that may or may not have involved copious urination.
What I can confirm is that, whatever happened or didn’t happen to that monument, an absolute flood of White Tears followed. Our self-described ‘Karen’ lover was not happy about this at all. The possibility of allegedly piss-staining a Confederate Monument surely set back the Defund the Police Movement, in her well-researched opinion. She knew this because she was dating another person who was Black and had therefore been vested with the authority to speak on behalf of all Black people.
She did not feel that all Black people had provided sufficient permission in advance to allegedly urinate on a Confederate Monument in the middle of a swamp in rural Florida.
The NAACP should really have been consulted first to make sure this was for the benefit of The Movement.
An emailed plan should have been submitted for consideration no later than 3 weeks in advance of such an endeavor. The media could capture this moment unexpectedly in time and change everything that happened in the Summer of 2020, altering the course of history in favor of white supremacy somehow. Paparazzi were surely waiting behind a bush to see what three queer people would do in response to encountering a Confederate Monument in the middle of a swamp in rural Florida. They obviously anticipated that this exact inevitable scenario would allegedly come to fruition.
A giant argument about racism ensued.
Based on the power vested in our self-described ‘Karen’ by a metamour, who happened to be Black, my wife was assured they ‘passed as white from behind’ and therefore had no more authority to speak to the historical effects of racism at this moment than she did as a white woman. More on that later. When this was disputed, we were reminded, once again, that these weren’t the Oppression Olympics.
She then interrupted our discussion of racism because it was time for her to attend a zoom meeting to sing a moon song that was sung by a white man who once went to India. This trip to India apparently gave him the authority to appropriate Indian culture by teaching hundreds of paying white people a musical mantra that an Indian spiritual authority had allegedly given him in exchange for some money.
She then interrupted our discussion of racism because it was time for her to attend a zoom meeting to sing a moon song that was sung by a white man who once went to India.
As the white man’s appropriative Indian-inspired music played in the background, my wife and I sat at the kitchen table of the B&B and stared at each other for a long moment. Then, we both burst out laughing.
“Did she really just ditch our argument about racism to go appropriate Indian culture for a couple of hours?”
Yes, yes, she did!
We stopped laughing when we learned that that Indian spiritual authority had taught our girlfriend a mantra that cursed us all.
We stopped laughing when we learned that that Indian spiritual authority had taught our girlfriend a mantra that cursed us all.
As our self-described ‘Karen’ lover chanted in the other room, human excrement began to flow out of the shower drain.
It flowed and it flowed. I sh*t you not.
The next morning, I was sleeping on the couch, when my soon-to-be former lover approached me to discuss what had happened, alone. A funny thing about being in an interracial marriage is that white people often approach me first to try and get me on their side about racism. They think I’m the one who is going to be more sympathetic to their misunderstood plight.
I resent this.
Though I always try to break up kindly, this wasn’t my best effort. I was informed that I should have given at least 2 weeks notice and that I wasn’t allowed to exit a relationship so suddenly without thinking about it. I was too rash. I should have sent prior written notification to HR. That would have been more professional.
She said, “So now I lose both of you?”
She said, “So now I lose both of you?”
I felt interchangeable, like a stand-in for my wife. Since I was white, surely my decision was going to be the softest. It was a foregone conclusion that my wife and I would make the same call about our relationships, once I had opted to leave. My response dripped with both sarcasm and sincerity:
“Ohhh, no! This gets better. We’re in a triad. The fun part of being in a triad is that, after an argument like this, we each get to have the conversation about whether we want to stay together individually. You and my wife might have a different outcome. If so, we get to be metamours!”
Though my part of ‘the talk’ had only lasted a few minutes, I left my former lover and my wife to discuss the state of their relationship for a few hours, until my wife texted me to let me know that we were being kicked out of the B&B. We had been told to go back to North Carolina immediately.
Now, I promised to talk about racism and how well my wife ‘passes as white from behind’.
Being two alleged radical rebels, we decided not to go back to North Carolina immediately. Instead, we got another B&B in the nearest small town and got some sushi to settle our stomachs.
As we were walking down the street in search of consolation sushi, that evening, someone in a blue truck drove up from behind us, rolled down their window, and began shouting a slew of ugly xenophobic rhetoric at my wife while shaking their fists. I think my wife would have won the Oppression Olympics of our dissolved triad at that moment, had the three of us still been playing.
Shortly after, a mass shooting would lead to the beginning of the Stop Asian Hate Movement, so apparently my wife isn’t the only one who isn’t benefitting from the ‘privilege’ of ‘passing as white from behind’.
Well, Mx. Detective Anderson, your efforts in searching for an arrest have been frustrated.
I know. I’m such a tease! I didn’t even provide any BDSM pornography links for your ‘researching’ pleasure. If I may say so myself, I do think I’ve provided you with some ‘criminal psychology research’ gold by telling you to google ‘Dominatrix’, though. If I haven’t yet earned your membership fee support, I will add a free bonus and tell you to google ‘naughty boy’ for me. You’re welcome, Officer. Keep working that crime-fighting unit. Wait. That didn’t come out right.
Anyway, moving on…
4. The Not-So-Frequently Asked Question
Here is the question that I wish you, dear reader, had asked me, instead of asking about my transmasculine, Testosterone-fueled anger:
Does allegedly urinating copiously upon a Confederate Monument really set back The Movement to Defund the Police?
I’m so glad you finally asked! We weren’t sure, so we interviewed a small panel of trusted friends after getting them to blindly reassure us that they had been authorized to speak on behalf of absolutely all Black people on this important subject of Civil Rights and BLM.
They unanimously agreed that it would have been better for us all to allegedly defecate upon the Confederate Monument in the middle of the swamp in Florida where no manatees were located. Then, they unanimously agreed that we should have set it on fire. This probably wouldn’t have had much impact on The Movement either way, but our friends who claimed the authority to speak on behalf of all Black people just this once unanimously felt it would have been more satisfying had this happened in our story.
Regardless, this question is what this writing really should have been about, rather than transmasculine, Testosterone-fueled repressed anger, but that’s just one trans man’s opinion. I cannot claim to speak on behalf of all trans men or transmasculine individuals on this subject. I will defer to my editor and transmasculine audiences for any backup opinions.
Here’s the part where I finally answer my most Frequently Asked disappointing Question as a trans man:
5. The Most Frequently Asked Question
Am I angrier now that I’m on Testosterone?
No, surprisingly, despite everything that has been going on in my life over the past couple of years, including an allegedly piss-stained Confederate Monument causing a triad dissolution, being unable to protect my wife from racism that still happens even from behind, police training microaggressions, experiencing violence that ‘happens only to women’, family losses, and lots of customer service during a Pandemic, I’m doing decently well with anger so far.
I still have a fair amount of anger, but for reasons explained above, it’s all pretty justified. I cope through laughter, if you haven’t guessed. If that doesn’t work, I just need to take a trip to the recycling center to throw some glass kombucha bottles into the glass smasher machine as hard as I can for a bit, and I’ll be just fine.
What I’m really worried about is how the cis people are doing these days. I’m especially worried about the police officer who clicked away before they even found out whether a fabulous crime had allegedly been committed by an unknown person(s). That detective isn’t doing very well, but at least I’ve encouraged them to research the word ‘Dominatrix’ in search of a release…Oops, I mean ‘criminology research’.
6. A Romantic Aftercare Session
Whew! I need a cigarette, now.
Was that as good for you as it was for me? If you’re still here, I guess it was.
I may have just shot my emotional load here, but romance isn’t dead. Let’s do some aftercare together.
I’m going to leave you with a nice musical interlude. The lyrics hit a little differently if you’re a trans man who lost family for being yourself, but they still fit just right (Alicia Keys, 2020, “Gramercy Park”, Sept. 18).
Sing along with me. If your voice can drown out mine, you’ll be happier.
Ohh, and go read this more serious and more important writing by Andre Henry, if you didn’t catch the earlier link.
A Final Note:
Ever since the Confederate Monument incident allegedly occurred, I have begun receiving very frequent dead-naming calls from the police asking me to fund their training. I’m very suspicious that this may be the hilarious revenge of a jilted lover, but I can neither confirm nor deny that this is her fault. It could be a perfect coincidence.
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