Identity

If you were going into the office tomorrow as a woman, when for the last 17 years you’d been going to the same office as a man, how would you do it? Clothes and make-up must be perfect, that’s a given, but what else will it take? Attitude. Certainly, you’ve been working on the attitude for the last 25 years. The planning, the learning gestures and gait and posture. You’re certain that as you embraced the feminine, your colleagues pegged you as gay. You do admit, you are on the “queer spectrum” a term you overheard during the firm’s Pride Day celebration.

Will you be accepted? Will you be shunned? How is this first day going to go? It’s “Picture Day” tomorrow. The day all the shiny new associates get their Identity badges, and since the photographers are on site – anyone who wants to update their photos can do so. This picture will also be on the firm directory, the firm web site, and could be used in any client presentations where the firm chooses to include photos.

Should you wear a name tag with your new name? Will people call you by your dead name. You were christened Charles Mercer Stevens. Your parents raised a boy. Decent at Track and Field. Sucked at football and baseball. Limited fumbling experiences dating. Always feeling like something wasn’t right. Like your skin didn’t fit right. Your body was wrong, because it was the body of Charles Mercer Stevens, but that’s not who you are. Even then, that’s not who you were. You just lacked the courage, fortitude, strength, support – all of those things and more – to be the butterfly. To put yourself through sculpturing of your body so it would match who you see in your mind’s eye, and the long, painful recovery afterword.

When you started at this firm you would not have dreamed there’s even be a Pride Day. You literally walked the straight and narrow. You stayed in your assigned lane, within the expected box. You did work LGBTQ into your pro bono work – something you started that the firm has continued to support. They will support you, your colleagues who have been Colleagues. You and HR can work with the others.

You look in the close-up mirror, and are pleased with the reflection you find there. Your face is smooth, your eyebrows expertly plucked, your make-up is applied with finesse. You makes a mental note to thank the salon for the eyebrows and make-up techniques. You move to the full mirror: smart low-heeled shoes, an A-line skirt, raincloud grey. A luscious blue silk blouse, over a very pretty demi-bra. You adjust your collar, pick up your briefcase.

You must use your old ID to get in the door. Like a new employee, HR walks you to your old office, You hold your breath until you see the name plate: Janelle M. Charles, Esq. Dropping your old ID in the shred box you go to get your new ID.

— Lkai