I’d been back in my hometown for a week or so, and a bunch of us decided to go to the movies together. Home for the summer from boarding school, that awkward and potent summer between high school and college, I was working as a dishwasher. I’d been living as a guy for about a year. The first time I used a men’s room with friends - friends who’d known me from before, friends who’d known me my whole life - I was a few weeks shy of my eighteenth birthday. And maybe they were washing their hands when I was leaving, and that’s why I’m thinking I probably didn’t wash my hands. Both at the urinals, and so their backs were toward me when I entered. I do remember that there were other men in the room. I can’t remember if I washed my hands or not. I made a beeline for the stalls, which were the same as the stalls in every women’s room I’d ever used in my first 17 years of life.
In fact, I didn’t see most of it as I walked in, head down and turned slightly away from the line of urinals. I looked about 14, probably, with my hair freshly cut short, my head still feeling light and buoyant after getting rid of the ponytail I’d carried through most of high school. The first time I used a men’s room, I was 17 years old.
