(Two of my friends and I are discussing our dating history.)
Friend #1: “I seem to like foreign guys. I’ve dated Jamaican, Nigerian, Peruvian…”
Friend #2: “Where is Peruvia, anyway?”
(There’s a pause.)
Friend #1: “Uh… think about what you just said.”
(I am over at my friend’s place helping to clean up because they have just had a lice outbreak.)
Friend: “Thanks for coming over and helping. And sorry about the potential exposure to lice.”
Me: “It’s fine. I’ve got really bad dandruff, so they don’t like me. They can’t get to my scalp.”
Friend: “Really?”
Me: “Yep. They’d have to go mining or get little bug dynamite.”
Friend: “That makes sense.” *laughs* “Now I’m imagining you with little sparks of light and puffs of smoke from where they are, um…” *he waves his hand vaguely for emphasis*
Me: “Fracking my scalp?”
(Friend #1 and I have just been shopping for clothes for Friend #2’s wedding. Friend #1 has been withdrawn and depressed for over a year and missed a lot of events, such as me coming out as transgender about 18 months ago.)
Me: “Oh, sorry. Can you not smoke here, please? My meds make me a high risk of pulmonary embolism.”
Friend #1: “What meds?”
Me: “Oh right, you don’t know. I’m transgender. It’s one of the side effects of the estrogens.”
Friend #1: “Oh, okay. Cool. I’ll go over here and finish then.”
(3-4 hours later I got home to find a message from Friend #2.)
Friend #2: “So, I’ve just spent nearly an hour explaining to [Friend #1] what transgender means…”
(Despite eating a LOT, even for a hungry teenager, while going through high school I am incredibly thin, so much that I had random parents approaching me and my mother, concerned I was being starved. My parents have friends over and I am sitting in my room on my laptop chatting with a friend when without warning the wife comes into my bedroom and hugs me.)
Family Friend: “I just want you to know that I’ll be here for you, if ever you need me. It’s all going to be okay.”
Me: “Uh… okay?” *tentative awkward hug back, then to friend once she was gone* “Huh, that was weird.”
(The following day…)
Mum: “Hey… did [Family Friend] go into your room last night?”
Me: “Yeah, it was really weird. She just walked up and hugged me out of the blue.”
Mum: “When she came back out she said you clutched her and cried into her shoulder and said how terrible parents we were, and that you wish she was your mother…”
(I attend an anime convention in a city that I’m not familiar with. Towards the end of the evening I run out to grab a sandwich. It is dark at this point, and it isn’t until I am halfway to the sandwich shop that I realize how long of a walk it is and how many creepy, possibly coked-out people are just lurking in the corners to whistle at me, and I think one was following me for a bit. On my way out of the sandwich shop I see two large, imposing men cosplaying in full armor with giant foam weapons. I run after them and stop them.)
Me: “Hey, are you two going back to the convention center?”
Guy #1: “Yeah, why?”
Me: “I want to walk with you, please. I don’t want to end up running into some complete weirdo!”
(Both guys look each other up and down for a minute, and back at me.)
Guy #2: “If you think we’re not complete weirdos I can’t imagine who you’ve been running into all night!”
This story is included in our Cosplay roundup.
