The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You (5 page)

Well, if he didn’t, I wanted him to think twice, I suppose. I wanted him to feel humbled, or perhaps shamed, that his rhetoric or thoughtlessness might have harmed someone who went out of hir way to help him. I wanted him to look at LGBTQ people with new eyes. I wouldn’t have minded some stirring music to go with it, either, and maybe a little speech about how I had changed his mind about faggots forever while his wife looked at both of us adoringly. Still holding hands, of course.

But here’s the thing—the entire business got me thinking even more about why it is that I am always stopping on roadsides. Partly, I think, it’s how much I like to be helpful (which, as my friends will tell you, is a powerful drive for me). But also, I think, as queers (and Jews too), we know what happens when everyone assumes that someone else will step up. In a rather intimate way, in all sorts of situations, we’ve been on the shit end of the I’m Sure Someone Will Do Something phenomenon too often to imagine that we’re not also Someone. That we can help, and that if there’s a risk to helping, the person may be worth the risk. And that, frankly, even if the person is not worth the risk, we remain the people who were willing to stop, to offer something.

I am not, by the way, limiting this to queers or Jews; I think that any group of people raised or grown into a mentality of the tribe, especially a tribe under siege, behaves in a similar fashion and understands what I mean here. In a situation of conserving resources, we learn to care first for our own. In networking, in making opportunities, we reach out to people like ourselves to give them a hand in some way. I have personally slept in the spare rooms of any number of strangers in any number of cities who were friends-of-friends or people I had spent a scant couple of hours with at a conference. When I teach my workshop, The LGBTQ Edge (about how queers and transpeople actually make better job candidates and should stop acting like it’s a negative to overcome), I remind people of this. Always, someone puts up a hand and says that their experience of their racial or ethnic group works similarly. We know how hard it can be, and when we can, we will try to help.

I am also pretty sure this works in ways we don’t consider. I learned a new one fifty miles later, when I saw a lopsided Buick on the soft shoulder with two small, white-haired persons peering down at the tire. With a sigh and a glance at my watch, I prepared to pull over again, only to veer off at the last minute when I saw a very large man dressed in full riding leathers, five days of beard growth on his face, and a bandanna tied on his head, halfway through changing their tire already. I pulled past the Buick and saw his custom Harley, painted with purple flames, parked just ahead of it. Maybe it’s too much to assume, but I kind of imagine it must have been, at least in part, the same thing; a combination of innate helpfulness and a strong sense of responsibility, but also the prompting of being able to engage in a little good PR for Our Kind, whichever kind that may be.

It Only Takes a Minute, I

Every week is full of tiny gender moments, little queer vignettes, these
rich and telling interactions that give me an endless running commentary
about what the world sees in me (and how the world likes it).
They’re like story bouillon; please add your own voice and experience
until they reach the desired strength and consistency.

In yet another airport van, I’m buckled in and waiting to go when we hold up for a late arrival. When he draws back the door, his eye falls on me first—maybe for having claimed the best seat, maybe for looking a little different. He takes a long look. I cock my head at him, then grin and say, “Sorry, buddy, you’re not sitting on my lap.” Everyone laughs, and he turns a little pink, then levers himself into the jump seat facing backwards, dragging his backpack awkwardly up behind him.

Fall fairs are my favorite. There are always a lot of small children to enjoy and a lot of fresh food to try. At the strawberry milk stand, I order a large and am told it’s the last of it—news greeted with terrible howls by the children behind me (when I turn, they are cute and downcast). I ask the vendor to turn my large into two smalls, and attempt a quiet escape. When their mother says, “Tell the nice man thank you,” and the older kid retorts, “Mo-ohm, that’s a
lady
,” I am already around the corner of the building and out of sight.

At our wedding, an old family friend—truly one of the nicest people I’ve ever known—marches around in great good humor introducing herself to people as having “known Sharon’s parents for years.” People look at her kindly, but as though she were a bit daft: that’s very nice, ma’am, but why are you
here
? I finally find a minute to take her aside and remind her that no one else in the building except her and her husband, my parents, and grandmothers ever call me by that name; many of the guests have never even heard it. They all call me Bear. She nods and says she’ll try it out.

Hardly anyone asks me, “Are you a boy or a girl?” anymore, not even small children. There were entire years when I’d get it at least once a week. I cannot tell whether this is because I look more firmly like one or the other these days, or because more people now know that this is actually a breathtakingly rude question. Maybe even packs of young boys, brimming with testosterone and bravado, just don’t care now? Or maybe I don’t trip their radar anymore. Can’t decide.

Is it terrible if I say that I’m exhausted with talking about my gender? These days it’s only so interesting, and only for so long, and the interesting part is over very, very fast. I still do it for money, because I’m good at it and because people still need to learn about it, but when I’m off work, I don’t really want to explain things about gender any more than a dentist wants to peer into your mouth between the appetizer and dessert. Which is to say, not at all.

Dutiful Grandchild

The only thing of any real use I was ever able to do for my grandfather came just weeks before he died. He and my grandmother had, in consultation with my parents and uncles, decided to leave their home in Florida (where all New York Jews go to retire) and relocate closer to their children. They chose a senior citizens’ residence building in Baltimore, a scant two miles from my uncles, and flew up to be in their new home while I drove their car north from Fort Lauderdale to join them.

I arrived on a sunny Wednesday morning, the day before their belongings did. A company whose sole task it is to move senior citizens had charge of their belongings, and it fell to me to meet them in Baltimore and get all of my grandparents’ things settled, along with them, into their new home (and attempt to keep Grandpa from overworking himself and Grandma from driving everyone crazy by changing her mind every five minutes about such critical issues as which drawer the silverware would live in). After going in, greeting my grandparents, and giving a detailed recitation of my drive north, I prepared to go to the settlement office of the building to meet the people in charge of their new place, Susan and Becky. I shook out the wrinkles in my Hawaiian shirt, splashed some water on my face, and went down to the second floor to introduce myself, going over in my head one more time the introduction I had been rehearsing since somewhere in Macon, Georgia.

It had occurred to me sometime around then that my grandparents would have arrived three days before me, and would therefore have given Susan and Becky an endless round of details and impertinent information about me, their eldest grandchild and only . . . granddaughter. Sharon. I wanted all the moving and settling to go smoothly, without any unpleasantness about who I was or what I was doing there or whether I was my brother or what-have-you. Beyond that, I had no idea what Susan or Becky had been told about me, or who they would be expecting. Somehow I felt fairly sure, though, that it wasn’t going to be someone like, well, someone like me.

But I was determined not to let a little thing like my gender get in the way of doing this service for my grandparents. And so I planned. I wore a shirt with great big flowers on it, gay as hell but perhaps readable as feminine if you, uh, squinted your eyes just right. I practiced pitching my voice up a little bit, too, just in case that might help. But mostly, I went over and over in my head some wording that I thought might make it clear to Susan and Becky, and whoever else showed up with the stuff, that I was definitely and legitimately the granddaughter they had been told to expect, regardless of off-season changes since my arrival in the world. I’d just finished a final rehearsal of the details when the elevator dinged. Second floor. Out I went.

I found my way down to the settlement office, confirmed the names on the door, and poked my head in, seeing two white women in their early forties both talking on two different phones. This was not in the plan. The plan had never been that they would get to have a good long time to have a look at me before I got started being charming and reassuring. I stood in the doorway, trying to look casual and yet still keen, while they finished their calls and took a leisurely look at my big ol’ sweaty self in their door-frame, and I worked hard not to flee or simper. At last, mercifully, Becky finished her call and turned to me. Unfortunately, I was still looking at Susan, and so I didn’t notice her finishing in time to start talking before she could say, “How can I help you, sir?”

Normally, I do not mind this. Normally, in fact, I like it fine. But today it was not helpful—today it meant I was starting from a place of having to work with a gender attribution already instead of being able to talk my way into some amusing middle spot. I took a deep breath, turned, and said, “Hi, I’m Bear Bergman, Rita and Stanley’s—”

“Grandson! Of course. Welcome to Roland Park.”

Shit. My mind started going a million miles an hour. Now what? Did I pretend to be my brother, hope no one noticed when my grandmother called out “Sharon” in ringing tones (and four syllables, a trick I have never been able to work out how she manages)? Did I ’fess up, make everyone feel uncomfortable, and hope Becky didn’t decide I was too queer or too scary and take it out on my fantastic grandparents? I wasn’t sure what to do, and frankly, though I’m often wrong, I’m much less often uncertain. I took a deep breath.

“Their granddaughter. Well, I started out that way, anyhow. They still call me Sharon,” I said with a little laugh.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth I cursed them. What kind of a half-assed thing was that to say? Double shit. Bad enough I’m a queer and a shapeshifter and a gender outlaw, now I’m . . . wait, she’s talking.

“Oh, I see. Great to meet you. Your grandparents are lovely people. Hang on—oh, Susan. This is Bear Bergman, the Bergmans’ granddaughter.”

Susan got up, greeted me warmly, shook my hand with both of hers. “You brought the car, yes? And you’re here to get them all settled in? That’s great. It’s so nice to meet you; your father said you were coming down. Let me find out if the movers have arrived. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

I stood there for a minute, sort of dumbstruck. I think I managed to decline the cup of coffee, but I couldn’t swear to it in court. I could swear that there was no sneering, no double-take, no homo weirdness, no tranny-what? Becky and Susan bustled around me for a few minutes and then took me upstairs where we met the movers.

My whole day went like this. I would show up, someone would smile and identify me as my grandparents’ grandson. Then Becky or Susan or Grandma herself would correct them and say I was the granddaughter, and they would smile and say oh, wonderful, nice to meet you. Frankly, it was a little freaky. Granted that my grandparents were paying a decently hefty fee to live here, and also granted that my grandparents were, and Grandma still is, really extremely fabulous. But I could not figure out why no one was being even slightly weird to me, or questioning even the smallest bit why this big, tenor dude was the granddaughter. Maybe, I thought, they watch a lot of Oprah in Baltimore.

I stayed four more days, arranging furniture and washing plates and running to the store, taking photographs of things my grandmother insisted had been damaged by the movers and unwrapping the same tiny, sentimental items I marveled at in childhood but wasn’t allowed to touch. I had the car washed and bought new hanging plants, coming and going from Roland Park multiple times a day. Whenever I saw Susan or Becky, or any of the other staff I’d met, they would greet me warmly and ask how Rita and Stanley were settling in. Just fine, I’d say. Doing fine.

It was almost the last day—Grandpa hadn’t been feeling well at all, and was downstairs in the care wing—when I was sitting on a chair outside his room for a few minutes, that I realized why no one there gave even a very small crap about my gender or any presumptions it might have created about my sexuality. There was only one gender recognized by the staff there in people my age: Dutiful Grandchild. I could have been as outwardly peculiar as could be and it didn’t matter, because I had shown up. That day, I realized that I was the only non-employee under fifty in the hallways. Sure, no one cared about my gender. In a building full of elders who had in so many cases been parked so they could wait to finish their days, anyone who showed up to help, to visit, to bring cheer or news or even lunch counted as a good thing. My gender was irrelevant, except as the Dutiful Grandchild. My internal narrative about being the Weird-Ass-Tranny-Butch-Grandthing-or-Whatever was entirely in my own head. In the eyes of Becky and Susan and the staff, I loved my grandparents and I had come to help. I could have been flossing the teeth of one head while singing Britney Spears tunes with the other for all they would have noticed or cared. Gender, schmender.

When I visit Grandma there now (my granddad died just two months after the move), she parades me through the halls like a trophy. I am her grandchild, come to pay her a visit. I visit as often as I can, staying with some of my favorite people in the world just down the road, and going to see my grandma twice a day. “All the way from
Canada
,” she says loudly, “my granddaughter.” Sometimes people say to her gently, as though she just can’t remember the right words anymore, “You mean your grandson.”