Itās been awhile since Iāve had a chance to blog, as Iāve been working on my long-term nonfiction project. But I wanted to share an interaction I had with someone recently. It sprang out of a recent visit to the grocery store:
The young cashier in the checkout line at Price Chopper scans my Chobani yogurt cups, Clif bars, single packs of tuna fish, produce, and other items. As the products move down the conveyer belt and the scanner beeps continuously, I study the physical features of the cashier, noticing that the person seems to straddle the line between male and female.
The cashierās name tag begins with the letter T., and an older woman with blond hair and glasses stands next to him, training him. The young cashier wears earrings and a red polo shirt with a Price Chopper patch over his chest, and his distinguishing characteristics are large breast tissue, short, spiky black hair with bristly sideburns, and a soft, pink face with stubble on the cheeks and upper lip.
As I watch T. work, I keep wondering: Is he a woman transitioning to man, a man transitioning to a female, or a teenager with a hormonal imbalance or another endocrine condition?
If I had to guess I would say the person is a woman transitioning to a male, but uncertainty remains.
It seems obvious, whatever the case, that he/she wants to escape his or her present state of being. In this age of heightened awareness about the LGBT community, with new pronouns used to describe human beings, I donāt know the proper way to refer to the young person who stands across from me.
Yet I recognize the personās humanity, no matter which way he or she leans.
And I feel sympathy for this individual. I hope he/she does not get ridiculed or feel shame about his/her gender dysphoria. I hope the person has a significant other to share lifeās burdens with, someone to lean on while the transitioning completes.
I am empathetic because of my own experience with gender neutrality, during my college years in the late 1980s and early ā90s when the same uncertainty followed me, as my high-pitched voice, epicene features, and body lacking sufficient testosterone made people question whether I was a he or a she, a man or a woman. During this period self-hatred simmered inside me when people would make the mistake of calling me āmam.ā
Later that night, when I pull into my apartment parking lot, accompanied by my wife, Pam, and our one-year-old son, Colin, I ask Pam if she has any thoughts about the clerk, if she thinks heās a guy or a girl.
She says the personās appearance is intentional, that heās created a certain look because heās gay. But she is still not certain about the gender. However, while we get out of the car, she says, āHe was very goodāvery good customer service.ā I guess thatās true. And I realize we canāt alter our looks, but our behavior and our job performance are gender neutral and within our ability to control.
And what Iāve learned from my nearly 50 years on this earth is that you have to deal with each individual at face value, person to person, and let all the identifying characteristicsāage, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientationāfall away. I try to approach each person as a blank slate, a vessel for the spirit inside.
And not to pull God into this blog, but as a Christian, I strive (but often fail) to view each person through the eyes of Christālooking at him or her with compassion and loveāseeing everything disappear except the beauty and the value of the person’s humanity.
And Iām thankful for this divine lesson reinforced to me in a grocery store checkout aisle.