Schrodinger's Woman (Patreon)

Content warning: This story discusses transphobia.

I finally made the decision to move out of Texas. There is no such thing as a clean slate in my eyes, and all the groundwork for my life here has been laid already, but it still feels like a fresh start. New house, new city, new state, new me. I don’t know a single person who lives here; the only person I did know moved away (and in doing so, emptied up the house I now live in). I can redefine myself yet again in any manner I choose to the people of Reno, Nevada, because truly no one knows me.

In Texas, I had friendly territory that took the form of my friends who knew and accepted me, and unfriendly territory – most of the rest of the entire city. There was a hostility that permeated the air and I inured myself to it, and I succeeded at it. The easiest mentality for me – and I think for any human being – to adapt to is “us vs. them”. It is vastly easier to walk down the street in heels and a skirt believing the stares are hostile from the moment they land upon me, because it reduces the variables at play in my head.

No matter how hard I would try to conform it would never assuage the malice in Texans’ eyes, so I would wear my trans-pride socks and clutch the spray-mace bottle in my purse and walk with righteous determination. I have no idea if I needed to be this concerned, and largely, I suspect not. I’m white – most trans people that face violence are POC, because this country is structurally biased against them in as many ways as possible– and I lived in the suburbs where hate crimes are minimal; the main form the cishet world expresses its displeasure in those places are passive-aggressive acts and the occasional rude comment. But I am a dramatic bitch and it was easier to mentally live on edge, because I was certain I wouldn’t fall with the stakes so high. If I kept my eyes on the stark line of the tightrope I would walk straight and true and every step would come with confidence, because I know that I am just in my quest to be myself, and every click of my heels was virtuous.

But nothing stays the same, and it’s called transition, not stagnation. A year and a half into this process when I’ve been blessed with rapid development and my body finally looks more like America’s stereotypical idea of a woman, I find myself unsure anew.

Two days after I moved to Reno, I met a man running an antique shop who had Waffen-SS uniforms on display and a III% hat on and I pleasantly chatted with him about model trains. I was terrified the entire time. I was absolutely certain as I strained to keep my tone pitched and my larynx high, my voice would crack and my Adam's apple would betray me, and then I would be a trans woman inside of a neo-Nazi’s store. The nightmare scenarios of my life on edge I’d built in my head from Texas were the reality I was slogging my way through as I searched for the fastest conversational exit before he would clock me.

And yet, I left the store without a problem. He was pleasant to me; I am assuming it’s because he saw a skinny, tall, white lady and I was nothing he would oppose in that form. The one possibility I had never prepared for – passing – came to fruition. I was barely even femme in my usual, high-effort, skirt-and-full-face-of-makeup way; perhaps the mask helped me by hiding my jawline? Maybe he simply had never met a trans woman before knowingly, and expected a cruel stereotype, rather than some lady who’d come in to ask about model trains trying her best to hold it together? I walked out unscathed, uninsulted – actually, offered help in my quest to find modern-era rolling stock for my HO layout.

The whole city is a strange blend of people that interact in odd ways – honest-to-god leftists fighting for the homeless and disenfranchised, strange libertarians with unclear motivations beyond a desire to live as the protagonist of reality, liberals with poor politics but pure hearts, all sprinkled with drunken gamblers and tourists – and there is no way to tell who or what I am dealing with in any given moment. As a result I have tried to consciously disarm myself. I no longer have to live on a tightrope. I am no longer in danger here, I told myself; even if I have no idea who I’m dealing with here, the active, mortal danger I have convinced myself to live under the spectre of is gone.

Then I escaped the Nazi Antique Shop unscathed, unclocked, and now I have no idea who they are dealing with, or who they think they’re dealing with. I know I’m a trans woman, but I don’t wear my pride socks every day. I don’t wear a pronoun pin. My voice is more femme than it’s ever consistently been. I wear a mask inside every store I enter. Am I finally passing? Do I now enter the stage where my main threats are the same as any other woman’s? Perhaps even in Houston, I could have escaped the tightrope.

I walked to the coffee shop down the street the other day. Really great lattes, just around the block from my house. I complimented the barista on her watch and she complimented my overcoat. A woman smiled at me as I waited for my drink.

I walked outside, sat down with my latte, and began to sip, and I saw her friendly expression turn to revulsion as she got closer. It’s impossible to know exactly what ran through her mind in that moment, but I have a guess, and it was the feeling she had been tricked.

It was the first time I had seen that specific sensation of disgust wash over someone so vibrantly. There’s a scene from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective burned into my memory that I saw as a teenager. Ace, played by Jim Carrey, has the dawning realization he has slept with a trans woman without knowing. He reacts by burning his clothes and vomiting at the idea of having been with a man. The woman at the coffee shop was having her own miniature 90s comedy moment of transphobia at the sight of seeing me, but I got to watch it wash over her in real time.

In Houston, I’d have known how to handle this. I would have sat there drinking my coffee assuming that she’d hate me before she met me, and I would have locked eyes with her hostile gaze until she feared the transsexual sitting at the coffee shop. But I’d let my guard down. I had dodged the neo-Nazi by passing. I can’t do that constantly, because I’m not quite there yet, presumably. But now what? What if the people who’ve been kind to me can’t tell, and I have to watch the Ace Ventura moment play across their faces when I walk outside and my jaw is revealed from behind my N95?

In Texas, it was one foot in front of the other, don’t look down, just keep walking the tightrope. I could navigate it with composure and grace back home. The rope never moved, the mentality never changed; all I had to do was keep my confidence.

In Nevada, it is a room full of trapdoors. I don’t know where I’m stepping next. My confidence is shattered; I am gingerly testing every next step with my toes, trying to see if the floor will give way if I put too much weight on it. The next trapdoor could be a Nazi with a poor ability to clock me, or it could be a genuinely nice person who won’t mind finding out I’m transgender, or it could be a million more ladies at the coffee shop, watching the disgust wash over them at the man that had fooled them for a moment.