Journal
July 2, 2020
She’s chosen a name, or part of one anyway. Natalie. “I like the nickname Nat,” she said.
Every day my vision of Ross blurs into the past and Natalie comes into focus. She has wigs now. A friend gave her more clothes. She’s learning to put on make-up and soften her voice.
It’s odd watching my husband morph into my wife. The pandemic has chained us together, so I have no choice but to watch as Ross blooms into Natalie Grace.
I spend the summer teaching and now that I work from home, I have the luxury of watching the flowers in my gardens bloom and fade and new flowers bloom in their place. I have the luxury of watching my husband bloom, too. My husband. My was-band. My husband left me.
Someone on a family and friends of transgender people Facebook group used the term wasband, and it stuck in my head. Right now, that’s what she is. My wasband, not yet my wife.
I think, “Ross never really existed. He never really was a him.” Reality isn’t always what we perceive it to be.
I probably would have never married a transwoman. But now I am married to a transwoman.
Nat researches sex reassignment options while I teach creative writing and early American Literature. I complete the unbearably cult-like “Quality Matters” online training bullshit and bitch and complain about how insane the training is, how crazy Trump and his Trumpsters are, how fucking criminal the police are for killing at will without cause and how some “Karen” got her foot in the door of higher education and convinced some numbskull administrator that “Quality Matters” – which is only a fucking rubric, really – would transform education! A fucking rubric.
The world is full of fucking idiots.
Smash the patriarchy and their god damn Karens!
Transgender Quality Matters Haiku
Ross to Natalie
And smash the patriarchy!
Draw outside the lines!
Non 