Chapter 13
Thirteen
“Thank you for meeting with me,” Billy from HR says on Friday morning, as if getting this meeting wasn’t a quest of high fantasy
proportions.
Ten minutes before my scheduled break, a man came up to the gift shop counter empty-handed. He let me give a whole spiel about
snow globes before asking if now was a good time for our chat, as if I had any control of my time. So much for my legally
mandated break—not to mention the prepared talking points I printed out days ago and stuck in my cubby, upstairs in the barn.
“Given the sensitive nature of the situation,” Billy’s saying, “I thought you might appreciate some privacy.”
True. I would’ve appreciated an invitation to his office or the pint-size conference room next to Anya’s office. I would’ve
settled for one of the picnic tables behind the barn, precariously close to the dumpsters.
Instead, the venue Billy has selected for our meeting is the most remote corner of the museum campus. The air is thick with the aroma of wild roses and golden poppies. We’re seated on a cool granite bench. It’d be idyllic, if it weren’t for the tombstone.
This bucolic little courtyard, sheltered by tall trellises wound with grapevines, is Victor Kane’s final resting place. That’s
his grave, five feet away. Forty-two years summed up in the tidy epitaph “Beloved Husband, Devoted Father” and his navy squadron,
surrounded by perfunctory Hebrew inscriptions, topped with an intricate Star of David.
I’ve been here before, of course. I’ve placed creek pebbles on his headstone and clucked my tongue at the bouquets of flowers
left by other people.
“I was hoping,” Billy says, “that you could tell me more about how you’ve been settling in. Anya mentioned a few incidents.
She said she felt terrible if she’d done anything that made you feel you needed to go to HR instead of speaking to her personally.
Not that you did anything wrong,” he adds quickly, “or that you’re obligated to talk to anyone, but . . .”
Personally, I only trail off when I lose my train of thought—or when all my trains of thought go off the rails. But I’ve been
around the track enough to know that other people trail off when they want you to fill the silence for them.
I need to play Billy’s game if I want him to take me seriously. “Anya isn’t the problem.” She’s part of the problem, but systemic, institutionalized transphobia’s a hell of a thing. “I’d just prefer to keep this confidential.”
“Of course,” Billy assures me, a portrait of concern. “That’s what I’m here for.”
I look up and meet Billy’s eyes.
“Anya’s right. There have been incidents. Mostly microaggressions, most likely accidental, but transphobic incidents nonetheless.”
The silence builds, barometric pressure increasing in the microbiome of this trellis enclosure-cum-grave-site.
“Can you tell me about those incidents?”
“Misgendering, mostly. Pronouns and honorifics. Getting grouped in with the girls. Some snide comments. It’s not—” that bad, I don’t say.
It isn’t that bad, objectively, but I don’t want to explain how not that bad accumulates.
Microaggressions accrue like interest on a subprime loan.
You can ignore it at first, tell yourself it’s a problem
for the future, but sooner or later, the debt will destroy you.
“Do you mind if I ask . . .” Billy scoots closer and lowers his voice, which is unnecessary because we are utterly alone except
for the bees and, perhaps, Kane’s ghost. “Who is it that’s misgendering you?”
“Depends on the day. I was told this was a trans-friendly work environment, but I don’t feel particularly safe. I know these sound like small issues, but—”
“I understand,” Billy says, “and that’s why I need to understand the scope of what’s happening. Who are you having issues with? Is there a pattern? Is anyone giving you trouble about which bathroom you’re using or . . . ?”
“It’s not an isolated issue.”
“I can’t help if you don’t give me anything to work with here. I understand that accidents can happen with anyone, but is
anyone intentionally disrespecting your gender?”
I understand what Billy’s asking me. He wants a bad guy because it’s easier to make someone take a corporate sensitivity training
course than to consider the possibility that workplace culture is transphobic. It shifts responsibility away from the museum;
if I cough up a name, then it’s one bad egg as opposed to avian flu in the henhouse.
What Billy doesn’t understand is that there’s no such thing as a tidy crime scene or an easy verdict. How am I supposed to
know in my heart of hearts if anyone commits a transphobic microaggression on purpose? No one’s slinging slurs, not to my
face, so what evidence does that leave?
What good would it do if I told Billy it was Anya in the break room with “Goldstein sisters” or Ford at ticketing with “she/her”
or Zach from security outside the cash room with “good day, ladies”?
“I don’t know if Anya told you,” Billy whispers, conspiratorial. “I’m gay.”
“Congratulations. I’m bi.”
“Thank you, Eli, for trusting me with that.”
Does he think this is some tearjerker coming out scene in a gay movie? If my trans identity is public record, my bisexuality never needed a headline.
“What I’m trying to say,” Billy says, “is that I understand what you’re going through.”
I sincerely doubt that. I can acknowledge his experience as a gay man of color who probably came of age in the shadow of the
AIDS epidemic, while also knowing his and my experiences are radically different. If Efraín were here, he’d ad lib a lecture
on intersectionality in the workplace, but why am I thinking about what Efraín would say?
I contacted HR because I want to solve this problem. If I had my talking points in front of me, I’d be doing a better job.
Instead, I’m off message and frazzled, without having even presented my case. I’ve let myself get distracted by the mere whiff
of managerial hearsay and the cloying floral fug to which I may be allergic.
“It’s not just about these one-off, maybe-accidental exchanges with colleagues. When I’m on the clock, I’m out front, in public,
selling tickets and souvenirs. We may be in NorCal, but our guests come from all over.”
“Forty-seven states and thirty-nine countries just last month.” Billy beams, regurgitating some quarterly sales report.
“In some of those places, it’s illegal to be trans.”
Billy frowns.
“A lot of people have never knowingly met a trans person, or they look at me and they don’t know what I am. They see me, listen to my voice, and draw their own conclusion. If they happen to read my name tag, they get confused.”
“I haven’t heard anything from security. Incidents with guests should be on file. Be honest. Are guests”—Billy drops his voice
so low I can barely hear him over the buzzing in my ears—“harassing you?”
“That’s the thing. It’s all harassment.”
Alarm outpaces his confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Legally. It’s sexual harassment. I don’t have the precise California legal code with me or the Bostock v. Clayton opinion”—if only I had the words of Neil fucking Gorsuch to bolster my point—“but transphobia in the workplace is sexual
harassment. Discrimination on the basis of sex, by another name. It’s illegal.”
“Of course,” Billy reassures me in a rush. “Your safety is our priority, always. If any guests have ever put you in danger . . .”
“Danger isn’t something I can measure. One weekend, I tallied every time a guest misgendered me, but after ten in the first
hour, I gave up. I felt each and every incident, and I had no way of knowing who was making an honest mistake or who, if I used the men’s restroom
on the floor, might use something other than words.”
“NSX doesn’t tolerate harassment.”
Billy takes off his glasses and fogs the lenses with a hefty sigh. When he puts them back on, he’s sitting straighter, no longer leaning in close, speaking friend to win my confidence. I recognize the mannequin set to his features as next-level customer service face.
“Listen, Eli,” he says, low and conciliatory, preemptively soothing the bear he’s about to poke. “I’m not sure what we can
do about guests. We can ask staff members to be more mindful, but guests are another matter. Under special circumstances,
it may be appropriate for management to step in. The rest of the time . . .”
I was expecting this. I came to Billy with a vague problem, and I didn’t expect him to have answers. That’s why I wrote up
talking points. I am a problem-solver at heart.
I couldn’t give Billy the specifics he wanted before, but now? I don’t need Gorsuch quotes when I have this ace up my sleeve.
“There was one incident. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, but . . .”
I’m not going to win an Emmy for my feigned ignorance performance, but I don’t need to convince critics, just an audience
of one.
From Billy’s sharp intake of breath, I’m pretty sure it’s working. “You can trust me.”
So I confide in him. I tell him how I thought I could stop incidents before they started by wearing a pronoun button. Then I tell him how I met Dagny Kane: a kiss with a fist with “institutional
messaging” tattooed on the knuckles.
“I triple-checked the employee handbook.” For once, I don’t curse the high lilt in my voice. “There’s nothing in the dress code about buttons.”
“Buttons aren’t part of the dress code.”
“Exactly. Buttons should be part of the dress code. If I were allowed to wear a pronoun button, there would be fewer incidents with guests and fewer accidents with staff. It would decrease the
transphobia I’m experiencing in the workplace without threatening customer experience. Unless the threat is the reminder that
I’m a trans person, breathing the same air, existing in their space.”
“Eli, no one is saying that.”
“It’s what I’m hearing.”
“Eli, you’re overestimating the power of HR. I’m not the right person to talk to about guest experience or branding or . . .”
“Buttons.”
“Buttons, right. That’s not my division.”
“I thought safeguarding employees’ safety was exactly your division.”
Billy’s customer service mask doesn’t slip. “Eli, do you really believe guests are going to read a one-inch button on your
shirt?”
“So you’re not going to do anything?” My voice doesn’t sound like an ingenue’s now. It’s low and rough, bitter like tea leaves
at the bottom of an oversteeped cup.
“I just don’t see that there’s anything I can do.”
Billy keeps talking, but I don’t hear him over the rush of fury in my blood. My jaw is ticking, temple throbbing, fingers drumming my thigh; my body is a cacophony of angry, discordant tics and tells.
What did I think would happen?
I overplayed my hand, getting emotional, bluffing litigious. I didn’t have the cards, or maybe I did, but it doesn’t matter.
Isn’t that what Efraín’s been trying to tell me all along? There’s no such thing as a winning hand in a rigged game. Management
weights the dice, stacks the deck, and wins, laws be damned.
It’s just so rich—the irony, that is.
I work in customer service, where the core operating principle is the customer is always right.
The other side of that coin is that the customer service worker must always be wrong.
On the floor, we laugh off minor customer complaints as soon as their backs are turned, but with senior management? When the
customer service employee clashes with management, the customer service employee is always wrong.
“Well, Eli, please let me know if anything changes.” Billy stands up. “It’s been a pleasure.”
Billy sticks out his hand, and I shake it. What else am I supposed to do?