Who Are You, OR Lady Looks Like A Dude
While I was working this afternoon, joni, this girl i went to high school with, came in and got some food and asked everyone to sign her petition to keep prairie dogs legal. I don't have any idea if she recognized me, although I recognized her immediately. I have been recognized before by people I went to high school with, and I look basically similar, but I was wearing my work hat and my work shirt, so I dunno. I wanted to be like "hey, do you know who I am?" and possibly end up heading somewhere toward, "So, did you hang out with Ashley while she was here? I heard you guys were maybe going to get together.." but I didn't see that overwhelming shine of recognition in her eyes and I didn't want to make a big deal out of it and have to come out to everyone else who was standing around. Normally I'm out all the time, but, as much as I like the vast majority of the people I work with, the shop is overall a very masculine place and I'm not at all sure how it would go over. Oh well.
On a related note, I gave my boss my copied driver's license/social security card paper and I felt very relieved when I remembered how that all went down when I got that job at Half Price Books; when it was time for me to turn that stuff in there, my ss card still said "morgan elizabeth thompson" and so I had to drag my boss back into his office and be like, "okay, here's the deal." It didn't bother me too much then, but it was a very different work environment. I'm basically glad that I didn't have to go through that this time. To my old boss' credit, though, he knew for several months before everyone else did, and, as far as I know, he didn't tell anyone. Good for you, Scott.
I think I turn on the gay a little bit at work. I've been noticing it more and more.. it's my own way of being a social chameleon. I'm always basically the same person, but my sexuality presentation, and to a smaller degree my gender presentation, fluctuates depending on my surroundings. The place is full of straight men and straight boys, and we all know that I would lose any pissing contest that I tried to participate in (not because I'm a big wuss, but because the straight male social rituals seem ridiculous to me and I can't bring myself to really give them my all), and so I enter Completely Non-Threatening mode. The result: even guys who do a bit of alpha jockeying with each other are pretty darn nice to me, and they sort of treat me a little like a girl sometimes... I don't mean that in as extreme a sense and it sounds, but it's the only way I can think of to describe things like them volunteering to climb up on cabinets to grab stuff for me that I need when they're not even taller or larger than I am or anything. Also, they don't really know me at all, partly because I just got there and partly because I'm one of the tiny tiny handful of people who work there for whom Spanish is not their first (and primary, sometimes only) language, but they respond very well to my being nice and open and always greeting them when they come in or come back from a delivery and they make small talk with me and smile at me and say goodbye to me when they leave. It's all very interesting to me, the way these things work. I don't feel like a straight boy, and I don't feel like they're treating me that way either, although none of them can possibly be conscious of what's really going on, and i don't think any of them seriously think I'm a homo or think of me as a girl. They just sort of respond to the vibe I put off naturally. That's my assessment, anyway.
On a related note, I gave my boss my copied driver's license/social security card paper and I felt very relieved when I remembered how that all went down when I got that job at Half Price Books; when it was time for me to turn that stuff in there, my ss card still said "morgan elizabeth thompson" and so I had to drag my boss back into his office and be like, "okay, here's the deal." It didn't bother me too much then, but it was a very different work environment. I'm basically glad that I didn't have to go through that this time. To my old boss' credit, though, he knew for several months before everyone else did, and, as far as I know, he didn't tell anyone. Good for you, Scott.
I think I turn on the gay a little bit at work. I've been noticing it more and more.. it's my own way of being a social chameleon. I'm always basically the same person, but my sexuality presentation, and to a smaller degree my gender presentation, fluctuates depending on my surroundings. The place is full of straight men and straight boys, and we all know that I would lose any pissing contest that I tried to participate in (not because I'm a big wuss, but because the straight male social rituals seem ridiculous to me and I can't bring myself to really give them my all), and so I enter Completely Non-Threatening mode. The result: even guys who do a bit of alpha jockeying with each other are pretty darn nice to me, and they sort of treat me a little like a girl sometimes... I don't mean that in as extreme a sense and it sounds, but it's the only way I can think of to describe things like them volunteering to climb up on cabinets to grab stuff for me that I need when they're not even taller or larger than I am or anything. Also, they don't really know me at all, partly because I just got there and partly because I'm one of the tiny tiny handful of people who work there for whom Spanish is not their first (and primary, sometimes only) language, but they respond very well to my being nice and open and always greeting them when they come in or come back from a delivery and they make small talk with me and smile at me and say goodbye to me when they leave. It's all very interesting to me, the way these things work. I don't feel like a straight boy, and I don't feel like they're treating me that way either, although none of them can possibly be conscious of what's really going on, and i don't think any of them seriously think I'm a homo or think of me as a girl. They just sort of respond to the vibe I put off naturally. That's my assessment, anyway.