Ask a silly question
I SIT IN THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE.
He asks: “So, when did you know?” I say: “Always.” Because I’ve heard that simplicity gets results. It is one phrase that has spanned my lifetime. No matter what setting, country or occasion, it remains un defeatable. Like a cockroach that refuses to disappear, it doesn’t care which part of my life I am in; it will always emerge: “So, when did you know?”
People always ask me this, or, if I am not around, they will ask my mother, or a friend, or even a teacher I haven’t seen in years – “So, when did Travis … you know?” The “you” and “know” will come with verbalised italics. If an emoji could appear out of thin air, it would be the eyes darting to the side of the room accompanied by a vague hand gesture, as if to say: so, when was it clear Travis would become a cross-dressing deviant who is straying from God’s path?
Of course, humans are naturally curious, but I find British ways of communicating to be crowded with social pleasantries and forced “politeness” – an investment in never rocking the boat or being seen as out of line. Asking any form of direct question at a British dinner table can cause waves of disapproving murmurs for months. Yet, present that same dinner table with someone who is visibly gender non conforming, wearing a dress, with a bit of a five o’clock shadow coming through, and all of those manners disappear. “So, when did you know?” becomes their version of weather talk or asking what you do for a living. People want to know, often within the first handshake or moment you sit down, whether you were always like this, what your parents think, the defining moment you knew, and when you first tried on the red lipstick and dress from your mother’s closet (even if, in
