Grand Theft Auto Turned a Transphobic Man Into My Friend

How gaming with me changed a hateful mind

If you’re here to read about a literal high-speed pursuit, you’ve come to the wrong place. My need for speed falls squarely in the world of video games.

My boyfriend and I have been an item for a few years now. I could tell you the exact length of time, but I don’t wanna. A natural fear for him, as a man who had never dated a trans woman before me, was introducing me to his ‘rents. He tossed and turned over it. I understood.

My boyfriend is Spanish, and he comes from a very Catholic family, but although Papa doesn’t preach, the guilt has rubbed off on him.

He was scared to tell them. I mean, literally, he was shaking on the phone. He stuttered, and the man never did. All I could do was rub his back softly to comfort him.

My boyfriend’s face turned a winter shade of pale when they said they wanted to meet me. Do you know when you can see question marks floating around in someone’s head? Yeah, it was one of them.

We set out on the four-hour drive from Madrid to Murcia the following weekend. My partner chain-smoked. I’m a smoker, but this was a little much. It was like the boardroom of Mad Men in that car.

He hardly said a word other than a few instructions:

“Don’t talk about the time in Malaga.”

“Don’t tell the joke about the Trans magician…”

“Do not, I repeat, do not do that weird trick with the beer bottles…”

Fine, Papi. You got it, Papi.

After four long hours in the nicotine hotbox, we arrived. The house was beautiful. It may have been beautiful, but it looked like it belonged to a drug lord. I’m Colombian, I know these things. I have a natural eye for the bounties of ill-gotten gains. Of course, that’s untrue. I’m being sarcastic.

There were palm trees, there was a sprinkler, and I swear to Mother Mary that there was a gargoyle somewhere. This is the house of a Don. I won’t be told differently. Again, I’m being sarcastic.

We stood outside the stupidly big brown front door with a knocker the size of a crane hook. There was no chance of a cold call. You needed at least four people to knock on the door.

I had never seen a picture of his parents. I had heard lots about them. In my mind, they were modest working people. They ate fish swimming in olive oil and shared a particularly nice Rioja of an evening.

When his mother opened the door, surprisingly unaided, my jaw fell on the floor. You’ve seen Dolly Parton, right? Well this was La española Dolly Parton.

Let’s put it simply, there was more than one great knocker in that house.

After the introductions and the painfully broad smiles, we sat down, and that’s when the questions began. She asked questions like, “So, if you have a penis, then you’re a man, right?”

Yes. I’m a man. I’m a man who hates comfortable shoes and happened to be born with silicone in my chest due to my mother’s minor indiscretion with a circuit board nine months before my birth. Can you hear my eyes roll? I sure hope you can.

I navigated these questions well. I explained everything in simple terms, and it was during these questions that my boyfriend’s father showed up with his younger brother in tow. It’s worth noting that my boyfriend had no fingernails left after this exchange.

His father looked like your standard-issue dad. A man who looked like he had something to say about a thing or two but never did. You could see the words on his lips, tilting over the curve of them, never to fall. That man is repressed, or is oppressed, or both? I’d say both.

My boyfriend’s brother was different. He didn’t stop talking. I mean, he came out with the most peculiar bullshit. He ran his hands through his mullet one too many times, and his fingers brushed his patchy troubadour moustache all the time.

“You can’t deny biology, Sofia.” He put my name in air quotes.

My reply was, “Oh, you can; if nature gave you that shitty moustache, then you should most definitely deny it.”

“That’s typical of trans people. You can never have a debate. You have to revert to insults,” he said, while my boyfriend chewed the rest of his index finger off and drilled a hole in the marble floor with his knee tremor.

“If I thought logic would have been of any use, I would have used it, but logic dictates that you can’t use logic on the illogical. Do you follow my logic?” I said with a massive sense of pride.

The brother, who at the time was in his early twenties, stood up and stormed out. I would have, too, if I had my bum smacked by a stranger.

He was an angry young man who had spent too much time on dubious internet forums. I doubt he had ever spoken to a trans person before.

A few hours later, once two bottles of wine had been polished, and I had eaten my body weight in ham and cheese, I found him in his room. He was playing Grand Theft Auto.

I sat down beside him in his dark room. I doubt it had seen sunlight or fresh air for a long while, it was chaotic.

…I also expected him to blame me for ruining Shark Week.

I watched him play, and the longer I watched him play, the more we got to talking and then talking turned to laughter, and before I knew it, I was racing him. I genuinely had fun with him. Despite his earlier transphobia, my boyfriend’s brother was hilarious.

At the end of the night, he placed the control on the ground and he said, “Lo siento.”

In the years since we’ve pulled off many a virtual bank heist, and in the process, I’ve changed his point of view on trans people. Our life of virtual crime has brought us closer together, and I’m proud to consider him my own brother.

So, Grand Theft Auto did bring us together. We’ve even got our little crew called “TRANScendental.”

All it takes is for one little encounter to change your point of view forever, sometimes you’ve just got to rob a few banks and get into a few high-speed pursuits.

The Bloods and Crips have nothing on us.

Thank you so much for reading. Please feel free to leave a comment below, I’d love to meet you! In addition I would love for you to check out these great reads!

Daniel Ng: How To Navigate Life’s Tough Circumstances

Grace Delphia: Death by Custard and Other Unappetising Tales

Sheri Jacobs: No More Walking on Eggshells