Spring Begins

I got a text the other day. It was just one word from an unknown number, but it had a familiarity to it that set off the familiar chain of flight or fight responses. Calm down, I told myself, it reminds you of the Asshole but it could be anyone. I refocused, went about my day, but ever since then there has been just a little bit of extra alertness. This morning, after months of silence, a text that’s definitely from the Asshole showed up. I know about trauma - my graduate work was on trauma at a time when new thinking was transforming the concept. Hell, my day-to-day work is all trauma all the time. Yet I’m startled when these few sentences send me plummeting to the bottom of an empty elevator shaft. The last time I saw the Asshole, they were just back from a few months out of the country. They showed up not just at my front door but in my bedroom early in the morning. I was getting dressed to go marshal a march and then they started trying to stop me from going because they thought I should spend time with them. I just kept getting ready, but then when I tried to leave they blocked the door with their body so I couldn’t close it. When they realized I was going to leave anyway, they told me they were going to leave it open and let the cats run away. I had learned by that point that you can’t give in, so I left. I guess it took them a bit to realize that I really wasn’t coming back, door or no door. I was more than a block away, headed for the subway, when they caught up with me and grabbed me, trying to pull me down a less visible side street. They are more than twice my size, so I was struggling to break free. I never thought I would be grateful for racism, and I am fundamentally opposed to calling the police on trans people, but I knew that the usual Bay Ridge attitude of suspicion would work in my favor - if things kept escalating, someone would call the police. I got loose and made it a block, almost to the subway station, when they grabbed me again, reached into my pocket and snatched my phone. Then they pulled me into the diner, saying loudly that I was crazy and needed a psych eval. But as much as I complain about it, this is my neighborhood for almost 30 years and the people who work around here know me. The waiters hovered uncertainly. I kept arguing, “Give me my phone!” “You’re crazy” “give me my phone!” while I maneuvered us around so that I was between them and the door. Then I ran - down the subway steps and onto the train, leaving them with my phone. I was worried about what they would do with my phone, but it was most important to get away. I got to the march, put on my vest and took my position at the back but as we got to the end I started wondering what I was going home to and if they would still be there. When I got back to Brooklyn, the house was empty and my phone was on the table. They had used it to steal $500, money I had been saving for Connor’s biopsy. I hesitated about blocking them for a long time, afraid it would trigger them to show up at my house angry. Eventually I did and had months of silence until this, so I pressed “report spam,” but I can’t shake the feeling that this is not the end of it. Thinking about all this on my way to the Antiwar protest, my feet automatically took me to Trump Tower, where Sunday protests often are. It wasn’t until my mind registered the lack of activists that I remembered I was supposed to be at the military recruiting station in Times Square. I walked down 5th Ave and found the RAR crew arrayed in front of the giant American flag with signs, chanting. I took a sign and stood next to Naomi, so that the table of posters was on my other side to hold on to. While we were chanting, I noticed a group of tourists with several young boys approach us. The boys started looking at the posters on the table, asking their parents what they meant. Protest finished, I headed over to the office. Spring is in the air. Two clients excitedly told me about their new relationships, and another told me about her idea for a trans-friendly game shop and cosplay cafe with game-themed pastries. There’s also a bit of chaotic energy. My security staff, former clients who can spot things going on because they used to do them themselves, busted two clients drinking and told them to take it outside. A client came in without speaking to us, and a little while later his friend approached me to tell me that he lost his grandmother and has been cutting himself. Kevin took him and the first aid kit into the bathroom to get bandaged up. On her way out after speaking to the psychiatrist to complete paperwork for her benefitsa trans client who slept outside for years, stopped and said excitedly “I can make it to appointments now!” Her new apartment is a few blocks from our office, which is perfect. “It makes sense that you can do it now that you’re housed,” I told her. “The main thing is that I survived,” she said. “A lot of people don’t live through that. But you were always looking out for me!” And then she bounded up the stairs, heading home.