A True Story by Doctor Wyrm
I don’t remember what I had for lunch. The food at American University’s cafeteria wasn’t particularly memorable, and neither was the conversation. At least, not until somebody made it memorable in the worst possible way.
This was in the fall of 2011 — there’s a small chance I’m off by a year — and I was working as an IT contractor at AU in Washington, DC. I’d only been there a few days, possibly just one. There were three of us sitting at a table intended for four, discussing Microsoft Team Foundation Server as though it were the most important thing in the world. My companions were a peer and someone who was, more or less, my boss.
I won’t name them. They know who they are, and they might have become better people in the years since. People do sometimes learn from their mistakes, or so I am told.
Earlier that day, a young woman had come to my cubicle to get me set up with a laptop and network access. She was unusually tall, even for a woman. I’ve been an artist for decades, and I have a pretty good eye for anatomy, so I suspected she might be transgender. Mind you, I hadn’t met very many trans women in person at that time, and I certainly wasn’t going to ask. It wasn’t any of my damned business.
She was doing her job, and I was perfectly happy to let her do it.
Years later, I’d come to believe that this young woman was Sarah.
Now, back to lunch.
We were sitting there discussing TFS, when the same young woman entered the cafeteria carrying a tray. She appeared to be alone, and I think she sat down by herself. Perhaps she was waiting for someone. Perhaps she preferred to eat alone. I honestly couldn’t tell you.
But I do remember what happened next.
One of the men at my table, the one who had some authority over my work, tilted his head toward her and made a remark to his colleague.
He called her “it.”
I went cold.
You need to understand something about me. I’m an albino, and I’ve been legally half-blind for most of my life. Growing up looking different from everyone else teaches you certain things about human behavior, whether you want to learn them or not. You learn to recognize when people are talking about you, when you’re being excluded, and when somebody is trying to make you the butt of a joke. Being queer didn’t help, and having a rather unpleasant childhood certainly didn’t improve matters.
I put the hyper into hypervigilance.
So I knew exactly what was happening at that table. I remember my stomach tightening, and I don’t think I finished my lunch.
At some point, my boss looked at me, apparently expecting some acknowledgment that I was in on the joke. Perhaps a laugh, or a smile, or some other little signal that we were all comfortable treating another human being like something less than human.
I gave him nothing.
The conversation moved on.
Inside, I wanted to pick up my tray, walk across the cafeteria, and sit down with that young woman. I wanted to make it clear that not everyone in the building thought she was something to be mocked.
I didn’t do it.
There were reasons, of course. I was a contractor, and a new one at that. I needed the paycheck. These people had some measure of control over whether I’d continue getting one. I wasn’t even certain that sitting down uninvited with a stranger would be welcome.
Those are all perfectly respectable explanations.
They’re also the explanations I gave myself for the next thirteen years.
I finished the contract around Thanksgiving, did what I’d been hired to do, and went back to running my own IT company. I didn’t spend much time at AU after that, and I don’t recall ever speaking with the young woman again. I hadn’t even remembered her name, assuming I’d known it in the first place.
Life moved on.
Mine certainly did.
I’d known I was transgender for a long time – since age 14 – although for most of my life I hadn’t been willing to do much about it. Around age 42, I started transitioning on my own, initially using supplements, which was clever biohacking, but I had my own reasons, including keeping my decisions off my medical records. Maybe not the biggest triumph of modern medicine. The results were slow. By 2020, I’d developed tits, and by 2024 they’d become sufficiently obvious that hiding them under a jacket was becoming both impractical and increasingly annoying.
I was tired of hiding.
In 2024, I spent some time in Mazatlan, Mexico, where I could go out as myself without giving every damned thing a second thought. Later that year, my wife and I visited Rehoboth Beach, and I discovered that having a perfectly ordinary bodily function could require an elaborate risk assessment.
Where do you go to the bathroom on a boardwalk when there aren’t suitable facilities, and you’re not particularly confident that everyone will agree about which door you’re supposed to walk through?
I recall the town said they can’t afford to renovate the bathrooms to put in family restrooms that could be used by any gender. As far as I know, even in ’26 they still haven’t. Maybe someone in the federal government should help them get a grant to do that. I’d have to be content taking a piss at the Purple Parrot.
By winter, I was avoiding the gym because of the changing rooms.
And before someone brings up competitive sports, I don’t give a shit. That’s an entirely different discussion.
I just wanted to take a shit in peace.
Then came the election in November ’24.
As much as the Presidential results stung, among the people elected to Congress that year was none other than… Sarah McBride.
Holy shit. I’ll be damned.
I recognized her immediately.
I went looking through her professional history and confirmed she’d been at American University during the period when I worked there. The photographs matched the woman I remembered. Suddenly, I was back in that cafeteria, listening to a man refer to another human being as “it.”
I felt sick.
And then, barely two weeks after the election, members of the incoming majority decided that one of the most urgent issues confronting the United States was where Sarah McBride would be allowed to use the toilet.
Not inflation. Not the cost of housing. Not health care.
Bathroom police.
Never mind that members of Congress have bathrooms in their own offices. This was a truly stupid bit of political posturing, even by Marjorie Taylor Greene standards.
Representative Nancy Mace introduced a measure restricting transgender people from using certain facilities in the Capitol complex. Speaker Mike Johnson announced rules concerning single-sex restrooms and other facilities.
And the new Congress hadn’t even taken its seats yet.
McBride, who’d just been elected to represent the people of Delaware, was suddenly the subject of a national argument about where she could pee.
Well, that did it.
I was watching cable news, as I often do, when the whole damned thing got under my skin. I went on Discord and started ranting about the whole thing and the absurdity of treating transgender people as though we were some kind of public menace.
And I didn’t restrict myself to one channel. Oh, no. I pasted my opinions into several servers, because apparently one audience wasn’t sufficient for my indignation.
Somewhere in the middle of this political diatribe, I casually mentioned something along the lines of:
“Oh, yes. I’m trans too. Didn’t I tell you?”
Well, no. I probably hadn’t.
I’d spent years presenting myself as both queer and nonbinary, depending on the company and circumstances, but I’d never made such an explicit announcement to most of my friends.
I hadn’t planned to come out that afternoon.
I was simply so fucking angry that I no longer cared.
And then something rather unexpected happened.
Nothing.
Well, not nothing, exactly. Some people expressed support. Some people said nothing, which is what they usually said anyway, if I’m being perfectly honest. A few apparently missed the announcement altogether, and maybe still have to this day, which is understandable when somebody buries a personal revelation in the middle of a political rant several text-walls long.
My MAGFest friends were especially amusing. MAGFest is one of the queer-friendliest communities I’ve ever encountered, something I should have realized much sooner. Most of them reacted rather like Saitama from One-Punch Man.
“OK.”
And then we went back to whatever we’d been talking about.
My friends were still my friends.
Imagine that.
But I wasn’t finished being angry.
I signed up to volunteer with a group of queer advocates, who organized people to protect Drag Story Hour events at libraries and other public places. I attended a couple of these gatherings, and they were rather different from what the protesters outside apparently imagined them to be.
There was usually a very pretty princess with elaborate hair and makeup, reading stories to little kids whose parents had brought them to the library. I saw nothing lewd or remotely scandalous.
Our role was to play cheerful Disney music and spin rainbow umbrellas.
One time, some religious protesters showed up, loudly praying in public as though the presence of a drag queen reading children’s books constituted an emergency requiring divine intervention. We formed a colorful barrier of spinning umbrellas between them and the families entering the building.
It was a perfectly ridiculous spectacle, and it worked for our purposes.
I already had experience with decentralized activism. Back in the late naughties, during Operation Chanology, I’d been among the people willing to put a real name on protest permits for Anonymous. We sometimes called ourselves “the Named.” Some of us had gotten doxxed. Others had to sign the paperwork, even if the people holding the signs or cosplaying as The Burger King preferred to remain, well, anonymous, actually.
We are Legion… We do not forget.
And these days, a lot of them are perfectly respectable adults. Some even have kids.
Anyway, organizing demonstrations wasn’t some new adventure I’d discovered during a mid-life crisis.
But the idea I proposed for Congress was particularly delicious.
If they wanted transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to their sex assigned at birth, then why not give them exactly what they were asking for?
Imagine a group of trans women, dressed in skirts, heels, and makeup, dutifully filing into the men’s rooms in the congressional office buildings… to use the urinals.
No violence. No vandalism. Just following the rules as they’d been written.
And if some cisgender women wanted to help by dressing as men and using the women’s rooms too, well, that could make the point even more effectively.
I shared the idea through Discord and Signal, and people responded. I created a Discord server specifically for organizing the demonstration. We discussed dates, locations, participation, and what we hoped to accomplish.
One old friend, a cisgender woman I’d known for decades, was prepared to help. She’d worn fake mustaches for school plays before, so why not do it again for a political demonstration?
Her willingness meant a great deal to me, especially considering how much history we’d shared.
Ultimately, circumstances involving families, health, and other obligations prevented both of us from participating as we’d imagined.
That’s how life works. People can have the best intentions in the world, but you can’t always turn those intentions into a crowd.
I selected dates in January, reserved blocks of tickets for Capitol tours, and started working out the logistics. In retrospect, I’d announced dates before enough people had committed to showing up. January is cold in Washington, DC, which is a fairly well-established fact that even an experienced organizer can underestimate.
But before I’d officially canceled anything, I needed to conduct some reconnaissance.
My wife drove us into Washington, and we took a tour of the Capitol building. I wanted to see the facilities and the public spaces, and determine whether our proposed demonstration would actually make sense.
We photographed some promising-looking triangles not far from the building. There were new security fences built because of January 6th that gave us a little shock.
Nobody was gonna notice us, even if we’d held signs on inauguration day.
It turned out that the public portions of the Capitol had men’s, women’s, and family restrooms. There were already alternatives for people who weren’t comfortable using a particular facility.
Well, shit.
That complicated our original approach. The real controversy concerned the rules for members and staff, particularly in the congressional office areas. Harassing ordinary visitors or inconveniencing people who had nothing to do with those decisions wasn’t going to accomplish anything useful.
So, the plan needed some reconsideration.
Eventually, only three people signed up for our proposed demonstration. That wasn’t enough to accomplish what I’d intended, and I was feeling under the weather anyway, so I canceled it.
Other activists continued organizing their own events. Some demonstrations looked pretty similar to what we’d discussed, while others took different approaches. People went into congressional buildings, made videos, staged demonstrations, and sometimes sought confrontations that got them arrested.
Don’t let me make that sound too dramatic. In Washington DC, you can get arrested for protesting, then spend an hour in jail and have the ACLU pay your fines and be back out on the streets to do it again before breakfast.
I can’t tell you which of those people heard my idea, which thought of it independently, or how far my messages traveled through the various online communities like Discord or Signal.
I can tell you that I proposed it, and that I wasn’t the only person who thought it was worth doing.
And that’s fine.
Copy me, if the end result is democracy. In fact, I rather encourage it.
There’s no copyright on free speech. Remember that.
Over the following year, I continued living increasingly openly as myself. In early December ’25, I filed for my legal name change and within a month – give or take, by government holiday calendars – I officially became Tomiko Carmen.
Anyway, I hadn’t come out according to some carefully considered personal schedule. I’d simply become angry enough to kick the closet door off its hinges, and once I was outside, I discovered that I rather liked it there.
There was no particular reason to go back.
Which brings us to November ’26.
I’d been watching the midterm returns on the 3rd, like a lot of people. I voted a few days early, stayed up late, got excited, drank rather more than I should have, laughed a lot, and managed to miss a doctor’s appointment the following morning. I do not offer this as a recommended method of political participation.
Nearly a week later, my wife came into the kitchen with some news from Colorado.
Lauren Boebert was in serious trouble.
Actually, I wasn’t the one who heard it first. My sister, Vivian, was there at the time. She has her own life, opinions, and interests, and I’m not entitled to monopolize everything just because I happen to be writing the story.
But when I heard the news myself, I made a fist and pumped it into the air.
“Yeah, fuck you. Serves you right!”
Now, you might reasonably ask why I had such a personal reaction to the election of a congresswoman from Colorado. I don’t live in Colorado. I’ve never even lived there. Outside of watching South Park, I don’t even particularly care about the place, except insofar as I care about what happens to everyone living in the United States.
But I met Lauren Boebert, once.
Or, more accurately, Lauren Boebert had met me, although I doubt she noticed.
Remember that reconnaissance trip to the Capitol?
Our tour had taken us into some of the oldest parts of the building, through a series of relatively small rooms and hallways. There were quite a few people in our group, and the crowd was packed rather tightly together.
If you’ve read John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar, you might appreciate the spatial arrangement.
I was wearing my usual open-toed Doc Martens sandals, because apparently winter is no reason to abandon one’s preferred footwear. I’m made of tougher stuff than that, and have no reason to avoid a paradox.
Get it? No? Well, nevermind. It was a UDP joke anyway. Let a dad tell one every once in a while.
The tour guide was talking about something, and I was looking around, taking in the architecture.
There was a narrow passage with a balcony or railing along the right. Behind it there were several doors leading into adjoining rooms.
One of those doors opened.
Out came a woman with dark hair wearing a dark green velvet dress. She shut the door behind her abruptly – can I say she seemed to slam it? – and started moving down the passage toward us.
I recognized her almost immediately. I’d seen her on C-SPAN hundreds of times.
Holy shit. That’s Lauren Boebert.
And she was coming straight toward me.
I tried to move out of her way, but the crowd was packed too tightly for me to complete the maneuver.
She didn’t stop.
She body-checked me.
Not some gentle brushing of shoulders as two people passed in a crowded hallway. She shoved her way through, knocking me aside as she went by. I swear on the Constitution of the United States, she damned-near crushed my foot under her heels.
My immediate concern was keeping my exposed foot out of her path, because I had no particular desire to discover what a congresswoman’s shoes could do to my toes.
I’d done well enough on that part.
By the time I’d recovered my balance and fully processed what had happened, she was already halfway across the room, pushing her way past other people.
No apology. No acknowledgment. Not even the courtesy of pretending she’d noticed another person was there.
Nothing.
I turned to my wife, who hadn’t seen what happened, and said something like, “I think that was Lauren Boebert… no, I’m sure of it.”
And then, having missed the opportunity to say anything directly to the woman who’d nearly flattened me, I was left with the rather uncharitable thought:
What a fuckin’ bitch.
So, there you have it.
Heh, maybe we can do an “I got shoved by Lauren Boebert” Meetup group someday. I’ll see y’all at The Bottom Line, assuming it’s still around. Otherwise, maybe Froggy Bottom?
I didn’t defeat Lauren Boebert. I didn’t organize the voters of Colorado, and I certainly can’t claim that my little encounter in the Capitol had anything to do with the election.
As I write this, Eileen Laubacher has declared victory and CNN has projected her the winner, though the official counting isn’t finished and Boebert hasn’t conceded. That’s fine. Count every vote. Democracy is supposed to work that way.
But I have to admit that watching the returns has been particularly satisfying, for me, on a personal level.
And as for Sarah McBride, if you ever happen to read this, I owe you an apology.
I believe we met briefly at American University, many years ago. You were helping me get set up for a job, and I remember you being courteous and professional. Later, I sat at a table where two people treated you like shit. I didn’t participate, but I didn’t stand up for you either.
I wish I had. I was afraid of losing my job, and I stayed quiet.
For that, I’m sorry.
I hope you never heard what they said, though I suspect you’d heard crap like that often enough. Lord knows, by now, I’ve heard people muttering out of one side of their mouth often enough to know what that sounds like. Been doin’ that all my life.
I hope you don’t remember me as one of the people sitting at that table. And I hope, despite everything that’s been thrown at you since, that you’ve found far more people willing to stand beside you than those who’d rather make your life more miserable.
I can’t change what I did that afternoon. But when I saw people treating you that way again, I finally decided to do something.
It took thirteen years, a political controversy, some rainbow umbrellas, and an unsuccessful attempt to organize a protest at the Capitol.
Somewhere along the way, I found the courage to tell the world who I was.
As for Lauren Boebert?
Goodbye. I won’t miss you.
And for fuck’s sake, bitch, watch where you’re walking on the way out.
