At 9:50 a.m. on March 14 at Stacey Pool in Austin, Texas, where I often swam before moving from Austin to San Francisco in 2004, I took off my shirt and got in the water.
I love swimming. It was one of the things I thought about a lot when deciding to have top surgery. With very small breasts, I could have gotten away with binding or even just having my nipples reduced if I didn't want to be able to take my shirt off in public.
The other men swimming at Stacey Pool on March 14 were old. One younger guy was pretty overweight, so what remains of my seromas didn't make me stand out all that much.
As I left, there was a bearded Texas hippie type preaching the gospel to a young blond lifeguard. There's a richness of experience in Austin that you don't get in San Francisco.
Later that day, I indulged my inner cowboy, who was bucking for attention while I was in Texas: I bought some cowboy boots at Allen's Boots -- one of the last real-Texas businesses on South Congress. (When I lived there, there was a gun store across the street.) I told the cowboy who rang up the sale that I hoped I would wear them because in San Francisco, you have to create your own space to be able to wear cowboy boots.
His response was "You're a Texan, man!" It was especially beautiful because he had already checked my driver's license against my credit card.
It was my last day in Austin. Later, as I changed planes in Dallas heading back to San Francisco, the gate attendant called me Scott, my last name, even though my boarding pass, as required by the FAA, listed my full name. I thought it was a clever way of not dealing with what he didn't understand.
But as I waited in the gateway to board the plane, he came up and asked me if I was [NAME REMOVED].
Yes.
He continued, with a line full of people behind me, that my boarding pass listed me as [NAME REMOVED] and said that [NAME REMOVED] was female. Did I have an ID identifying me as [NAME REMOVED]?
I asked him if he'd like to see my genitals. Then I boarded the plane. Everybody knows Dallas sucks.
But, yeah, it's time to change my official IDs.
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