#she claimed she’d only just heard of stonewall that past week and then explained what it was 1) incorrectly

[shoutsindwarvish]

my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, when discussing june holidays at a department-wide meeting today, defined pride as a holiday “celebrating the progress we’ve made as a society toward inclusion of lgbtq people” before briskly moving on

i didn’t think it was possible to center cishet people in a discussion of pride while simultaneously ignoring what a shitshow queer rights have been in the usa this past year in a single sentence but she managed it

[kivaqblog-blog]

Migraines, Chelsea, and Class Privilege

tl;dr: I went to Callen-Lorde Clinic yesterday, and they gave me something that fixed my migraines! But quite by accident, I got a close look at some class differences among queers which I normally don't see in person. Details below.

I’d thrown up twice at 2 or 3 am over the last week, and after the second time I’d had enough, as in I couldn’t take another night like that. It turned out that I had a low-grade fever, about 99.7 F. (37.6 C.). Pat, whom I was referred to — hi, Pat! thx! — gave me a pill I’ve never heard of and it worked, finally stopped the pain. I should’ve gone sooner, but I kept trying the tools in my allergy kit. I even went to my acupuncturist. Nothing worked for long.

After she evaluated me, Pat said that I probably have a virus too. Plus allergies, which trigger migraines: she has the same problem and said the warm-cold-warm-freezing weather we're having just makes it worse. I'm glad I went, even though I'll see my doctor, Eunmee, on Monday. Everyone’s on a first-name basis at C-L, which in itself takes away some of the tension around having to go to the doctor. They’re considerate of things that other clinics don't even think of.

A lot of the patients at C-L don’t have private insurance. There was a table out front to help people with it, and a nice young man who seemed mostly bored did ask if I needed insurance help. I smiled and said no, I’m fine, and he smiled and nodded like he knew I’d say that.

There was a big poster saying injectible estrogen is finally available again (some kind of corporate nonsense left thousands without E shots for nearly a year; I use patches, I was lucky). They have pronoun stickers for patients, and put their own pronouns on their ID badges. It’s a nice place, even when the pharmacy gets crowded. Some of us are regulars because we’re trans and are just having our health monitored as we transition. I look forward to my visits, usually, unless I have a migraine. But most people who come there do need medical help because they’re sick, like I did yesterday, and aren’t happy to have to be there.

_______

They said I could see Pat at 1 pm, so I went out to have lunch. I went to the first place I could find, a Le Pain Quotidien (Fr., “daily bread”). Usually I go into an LPQ for a cheese danish. This time I asked for chai and three mini-madeleines. I tried four times to get the young woman behind the counter to call me “ma’am,” but every time I tried, I just got this tilted-head non-response with silly-grin thing, really overdone, by way of a response, as if she not only couldn’t understand wtf I was saying, but was moreover momentarily rendered mute by it. “It’s ‘ma’am,’ actually.” Tilt, grin. “It’s ‘ma’am,’ not ‘sir.’” Tilt, grin.

So finally I directly told her, but she still acted like I was speaking Martian, unless I was ordering or paying for madeleines and chai, ffs. On reflection (I was eating madeleines, after all, and thinking about the past, there’s a Proust reference for French lit fans), I decided she was actually treating me as if I were stupid, and hoping I’d just go away.

I assume she must’ve had some personal reason which overrode all other considerations of courtesy and tact and required her to play dumb about transgender people. Like she’d never even seen one on tv. Which, I understand, has become more and more unlikely in recent years.

At least she stopped ‘sirring' me after the first four times. Which made it clear, on reflection, that she did hear me, and understood me, and knew exactly what I was and what I wanted. Yet she seemed physically unable to either use my proper honorific or explain why she wouldn’t or couldn’t. As if she’d never heard of such a thing. Even though I had long silver hair, was wearing earrings, two pendants, and a shoulder bag.

Which is sort of odd, really, because once they appeared every customer there looked queer, or at least were having lunch with someone queer. As my son said recently of a webcomic about college students, “Assume everyone is gay unless otherwise noted.” This is Chelsea after all, Ninth Avenue and West 16th. It’s where you live if you’re queer and rich.

I took my chai, mini-madeleines, and honorific and sat in the back. I began trying to use my phone’s keyboard to send Kathleen an update, and cursing at it, quietly, as is my wont. I had a migraine, and they come with a bad mood. At least it’s quiet in here, I thought. It was noon.

When I looked up again, there were flowers and condiments on the tables. People were streaming in and were being seated by a waiter. Suddenly the coffee joint turned into a charming little French resto with lots of vegetarian and lactose-free options. I had no idea this would happen, and it looked like they were going to let me finish my chai at my own pace.

But I asked for a menu anyway, on a hunch, and found what I wanted: a croque-monsieur on sourdough. It’s a French ham and cheese sandwich, more or less, toasted, and they served it with three kinds of mustard, one of them a lot like the mustard found on every single table in every café in Paris. I was so happy.

Soon I realized the people to my left were speaking French. The two on my right with MacBooks open were speaking German. There was a sharp corner I sat next to with no room for a table, so I had space to leave my coat and bags where they were on the bench. I wasn’t in anyone’s way.

Then I realized that, except for the one guy in the back with a laptop who looked like a wifi regular, everyone else had poured into this place at high noon. They were lunch regulars.

I was quite surprised. But the croque was great. And of course, I could afford it.

The others, one and all, looked like they could afford this and then some, if you know what I mean. They were there for the French food, and probably considered it a bargain; my croque was $12 plus tip, but it was worth it to me.

I overheard snippets of creativity-related convos, like, “so do you still want to dance?” (as in, do you still want to be a dancer?) They were all well-dressed. They all appeared to be cis. They all appeared to be white.

They mostly appeared to be male, too. I’m not very good at spotting transfolx who are trying to pass and are good at it, but I didn’t see anyone else in there who was overtly gender-variant.

They were all young, or nearly so, cute, fashionable, that sort of thing. I hate to generalize, but I looked around and, jeez Louise, I was surrounded by New York A-List types. People who keep summer houses at The Pines on Fire Island. This is not a world I’ve ever been part of.

Looking back now, it felt like the kind of place that, before transgender rights were added to the city anti-discrimination ordinance, would’ve turned away someone dressed like me, claiming that they were full, or that you needed a reservation, or would’ve made me leave once lunch started. I used to hear stories.

______

And that’s how I accidentally got a close-up look at a self-selected sample of contemporary Chelsea. I felt scruffy, because I hadn’t shaved, and felt generally out of place . No one here had exotic haircuts or lots of tattoos, which tbph are the kind of queers I feel more comfortable around these days. I stopped arguing with my phone over whether “transfolx” is a word and focussed on eating my croque, trying the different mustards. Then I paid with my AmEx gold card and left.

When I got back to the clinic I paid more attention to who appeared to be in which socioeconomic classes, at least visibly, especially people waiting to get a prescription filled or have lab work done. Since it seemed to take the pharmacy a solid hour to put ten pills in a bottle and give them to me — I saw six or eight people called ahead of me, wtf? — I got a chance to consider this at length, pausing to check the time on my phone every three minutes.

By the time it was ready, the school rush had started back in Brooklyn. I was so sick I did something I try to never do: call a Lyft and take a car home from Manhattan. $28 plus tunnel toll = $36, I think. Sitting there in the lobby, fiddling with the pickup location, I realized I was edging back into that other world, the world of queer people who can afford shit like lunch at French restaurants, really nice clothes, and a whiff of attitude, and who take cabs everywhere. I can only afford lunch and cabs occasionally, but it’s still another world, the one I spend most of my time in.

_______

There’s a good chance that none of us would’ve been in that restaurant if there hadn’t been a Stonewall Riot 48 years ago, a gay liberation movement composed of scruffy argumentative activists who would’ve been horrified if you could go back in time and tell them that one result is prosperous queers eating lunch at a place like this. It looked like they were all members or aspired to membership of the most privileged classes in the NYC queer community, all creative types or professionals of some kind, either talking business or taking a break from it. This is Chelsea in 2017: Le Pain Q. is two blocks from Callen-Lorde, but it’s a world away.

It was cold as fuck outside, with high winds, which was my other excuse for calling a car. I watched it approach on the phone, then I left a clinic always full of patients who could never afford to call a car on the spur of the moment, no matter how sick they were, and who would probably never go to LPQ, even to buy a coffee and danish. I got in my little bit of wheeled privilege, paid with my thumbprint, and went back to Brooklyn.