Now he wants to know why all the trans girls in Seattle are so angry, act so traumatized. “It’s not like you’re a bunch of child soldiers. Your parents weren’t killed in front of you.” He asserts that even when something nice happens, like a free drink, trans girls get triggered. Like everything is a wound, everything is trauma. He starts talking about this trans girl he met a few months ago; how all she did was bitch about AFABS and encourage cis scum to die. He wanted to be her friend, but she called trans guys Aidens, and did things like pick up all her meals drive-through, because she was convinced people inside would stare at her or misgender her. He describes the house this girl lives in—a coven of trans women polyamorously fucking each other to biblical levels of drama over the soundtrack of Skyrim on PS3, all the while telling each other how shitty the world was away from each other, until they so confused micro-aggressions for deep violence that they walked around with knives in their boots and canisters of mace dangling from their purses[...]

Most of the cruelty I’ve experienced has been inadvertant, the kind that comes from getting trampled so often that inevitablely someone steps somewhere sensitive[...]

The more I try to explain, to list the tiny grievances that added up to an intolerable day in my life, the more I sound unhinged. A man hissed at me on the bus. A bunch of teenagers loudly discussed whether I was really a guy. A girl I only knew on the Internet left a suicide note. The cashier at Whole Foods smirkingly called me “bro.” The TV at the nail salon, playing soundlessly, featured some nonsensical ghoul that I realized, with a shock, was someone’s idea of a trans woman, someone’s idea of me. The guy at the local corner store revealed that he knew where I lived and shrugged when I asked how: everyone around here knows about you. And now, I get irritated at one thing: a free drink, and I sound crazy complaining about that, right? Some total loony acting traumatized ‘cause a bartender tried to be kind.

My crush sighs and pulls out an ace. He knows people that have actually been raped, have actually been beaten—hell, half of the trans dudes he knows have been, and they aren’t paralyzed with anger, convinced they’re constantly persecuted. We’re talking real trauma, not someone whispering about them on the bus, much less the burden of free drinks. To which I know I can probably come up with some of my own friends’ real Trauma, but I’m too affronted, so I just shriek: THE WHOLE WORLD MONITORS AND MOCKS MY EVERY WAKING MOMENT!