About a month ago, I decided I would never use the men's room again. It just felt so completely wrong, I knew I didn't belong there. So I began using the women's room on a different floor of the building. The company I work in rents a floor in another company's building.
Everything was going fine, I was pretty sure I passed well enough--for one thing, I'd been using women's rooms all over creation for 2 years and never had any problem at all. But the other day I guess I somehow didn't pass and someone reported me to the building management. I had planned on coming out at work about 6 months from now. But today the boss came and mentioned this report about me. He left me an out to deny the rumor which I took to implicitly mean I would be allowed to skate if I did not repeat it. But I would not be able to live with myself if I were so untrue to myself. I simply answered, "I have a letter for you to read." I think he really didn't want me to confess, he would have preferred to sweep it under the rug and forget it, so he repeated the hint that I had an out. But I just handed him the "to whom it may concern" letter from my therapist.
He seemed OK with it, and I guess he's going to take the letter to the building management and work something out. He asked if it meant I was getting surgery--I said I don't know when, but I'm guessing the year after next--and he'd been wondering how did I get rid of the beard, so I told him about laser. I said I'd been meaning to tell him the news up front, to make the process smooth and not disruptive, and it would be no big deal, just a name change. I said it was my bad to jump the gun like that and I should have said something first, but I had been going to wait until I had more laser and make the change in about 6 months. But now that I'm out at work, I plan to move forward with the name change and everything immediately.
It came as a big relief to get this over with. I didn't go about it in the smartest way, true, but since I was immediately open and forthcoming when asked, I minimized the damage. I'd had the letter there all year, waiting for this moment.
Then when I told my friend there, she told me the other day a group of guys in the office had said behind my back that they think I'm a woman and they want to do me. One of them had been accused of groping women--I don't know why he's still working there--and she advised me to be careful around them. I said I'm bigger than any of them and they're the ones who'd better be careful around me if they didn't want a broken nose. I hate the male chauvinism, but liked hearing that I'm seen as a woman already.
National Coming Out Day is October 11--but I had mine one month early.
