When You’ve Gotta Go

The nightmares always begin as dreams: I am out at a party, I am out grocery shopping, I am wandering around a familiar-seeming large house, I am at the Bally’s gym in Mesa, AZ I used to go to with my parents in the 1990s. Pedestrian nighttime musings of my brain. All the REM visions pivot down the same course when, for some reason, I have to find a bathroom. I have no trouble locating the actual door to the men’s room, even when my dream takes place in a venue I have never actually been to. It is when I enter the bathroom that the feeling of dread begins to infiltrate, thin tendrils unfurling like after a single drop of black dye is added to a sink full of water.

The first variation goes like this: I open any stall I can find, only to find the toilet in each stall in some completely unusable state. Sometimes they are full to the brim with feces. Sometimes the toilet is broken. Not broken as in out-of-order, but literally shattered, as if someone had wandered through the men’s room with a sledgehammer, picking out individual johns for punishment. Sometimes the entire bowl has been rendered useless by being stuffed full of what would be rolls upon rolls of toilet paper.

After I look into every stall and find each toilet in one state or another of unuseableness, I next start to look at each available urinal as my need to use the facilities continues to grow exponentially. I have never used a urinal in my waking life, and likely would make a mess or a scene if I tried to, but my desperation in these dreams is so great I seriously consider it. Usually all but one urinal has also been violated in one way or another. As I stand at the urinal and try to formulate a strategy, I watch out of the corner of my eye as other men walk past me (although if all of the toilets and urinals are broken except this one, what the hell are they doing here?). I realize using the urinal will out myself as trans and could lead to different varieties of trouble. I am terrified by this point, heart racing. Just as I go to use the urinal, I wake up.

The second variation goes like this: after surveying toilets in stalls, I find a very gross, nearly unusable, stall that I decide I am going to try to use anyway. I lock the door, squatting, feeling disgusting and desperate. No sooner do I attempt to relieve myself then some guy is banging on the stall door, rattling the door, trying to open it. Despite the usual strained pleasantries (“hold on” “occupied” “just a moment”), the banging, rattling continues. I realize the door is going to be forced open. I mentally brace myself for a potentially violent confrontation. Then, I wake up.

I transitioned genders a decade ago. I began to consistently passing in public around approximately the same time, which is also when I began using men’s restrooms. Other than a surprised look I got at a movie theater in Tucson in 2009, I have had the great fortune of never being subject to any negative consequences while using the bathroom of my true gender. No verbal attacks, no physical threats. As many trans folks have experienced otherwise, I count myself lucky in this regard.

And yet these nightmares have continued to return time and again over the last ten years. While this type is less frequent than some of my other “top five” recurring terror scenarios, it still shows up again and again.

Although I changed my legal name back in the late aughts, I recently forced myself to deal with one of my least favorite parts of being trans during a recent work trip to San Francisco trip: going somewhere in person to change my legal name.

I had infrequently used accounts in my old name at both Wells Fargo and Bank of America. There are no Wells Fargo or Bank of America branches in or near Columbus, Ohio, my hometown of the last several years. I have tried to process these name changes by mail, by phone, and e-mail, but both institutions indicated I *must* visit a branch to get this done. When I explained I did not live near a branch, their answers did not change. As such, the old name remained on these accounts several years longer than it should have.

At the end of ninety minutes and some short walks around North Beach, I had induced both banks to update my name on each account. While the Bank of America change went smoothly, the Wells Fargo process was less so. After presenting the customer service representative with a driver’s license, U.S. passport, and certified copy of my name change court order, the CSR indicated to me she didn’t know if this was sufficient documentation. When I asked what else I could possibly present to her which would carry more weight than these documents, she shrugged. Sensing my frustration, the customer service representative relented, with the caveat I could still “receive a call from our legal department if the documentation is not accepted”. I said their legal department was welcome to call me at any time.

Reliving the name change experience, which I had not had to deal with in some years, made me realize why my bathroom nightmares symbolize part of my trans experience: every day things, things most other folks take for granted, can become needlessly difficult and stressful. People change their names every day for a variety of circumstances: marriages, divorces, adoptions, or because your showbiz manager insists upon it. I would wager none of these occasions garner the questioning, resistance, and animosity I have experienced over the last ten years in performing the ordinary task of what is essentially updating paperwork.

Trans folks in the US just want to use the bathroom, because we are human and have to defecate just like everyone else. In addition to the senseless violence any trans person might face trying to accomplish an unremarkable and basic human need, entire state legislatures take the time to pass laws to make the whole situation more dangerous and unpleasant. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, in 2017:

• Sixteen states — Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming — have considered legislation that would restrict access to multiuser restrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-segregated facilities on the basis of a definition of sex or gender consistent with sex assigned at birth or “biological sex.”
• Six states — Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — have considered legislation that would preempt municipal and county-level anti-discrimination laws. North Carolina is the only state to pass this type of legislation (House bill 2 and then House Bill 142).

And even though North Carolina’s House Bill 2 was repealed in March 2017, part of the repeal halts local governments from passing nondiscrimination ordinances until 2020, essentially allowing such discrimination to potentially continue all while North Carolina tries to parlay this “reversal” into repairing the economic damage done by HB2.

All this is to say even when a transgender person has transitioned, has achieved many previously impossible-seeming goals, the remaining intolerance and animosity for the trans community is no less harmful. Like an environmental contaminant, it seeps into our psyches, disrupts our dreams, as we try to live our every day lives.