Tw for violence, hate crimes, transphobic rhetoric, PTSD.
_
December 2016
On Fridays in the late afternoon/early evening when I was done with work, there was a particular coffeehouse I liked to visit and have a hazelnut latte and sometimes a pastry - since I did yoga and went running a few times a week, I wasn't concerned about it being "bad for me", and in any case, I earnt that shit.
While I wasn't really getting out much after the painful rejection from Xavier - not even to spend time with Michelle, since her happiness with Kim felt like rubbing salt in the wound - I still made it a point to treat myself, which felt especially important now. I still had that vague, passive wish to not be alive anymore, and the new reality of an impending Trump presidency didn't help that - but these little tiny things like nice coffee and a pastry were like life vests in the flood of depression.
Though I was an introvert who kept to myself at the coffee shop, I still engaged in people-watching. There were some regulars, like myself. One of them was a woman who looked to be in her forties or fifties, with short greying blonde hair, piercing light blue eyes, who wore baggy sweatpants and jumpers and a perpetually sour look on her face. She often stared at me, and it made me uncomfortable, both in and of itself and because the attention felt weird coming from... well... I couldn't tell if she was a masculine-looking cishet woman or perhaps a butch lesbian or perhaps not even a "she" but a non-binary or transmasc person pre-transition or very early into it, maybe even an "egg" like I had been in 2012 before my crisis of coming out. I didn't like to assume things about people based on their appearance, especially not their sexual or gender identity, but there was an intensity in the way she stared at me that made me think she was either checking me out or she disapproved of me somehow. I couldn't tell - and again, I didn't like to assume things - so I usually flashed her a quick smile just before I left, but otherwise said nothing to her and tended to look away when I noticed her staring.
The week before Christmas, the blonde short-haired woman wasn't there, even though she had been every Friday for months. I didn't think much of it at first, because people often went away for the holidays and I figured she was probably visiting family or friends or something - maybe she was a retail employee getting swamped. I didn't know. I did know there were four cops eating doughnuts and laughing a couple tables away and cops made my skin crawl, even though I practised civil rights law nowadays and not criminal defence, I still hated the police. My visceral discomfort with a bunch of cops so close by made me chug my coffee and wolf down my cheese danish, not even really enjoying it, I just wanted to fucking get out of there. Bad energy, Michelle and Kim would have said.
As I approached my Audi in the parking lot, I finally saw the blonde.
She was standing in front of the rear end of my car.
I slowed down. I took a careful look at her to see if maybe she was on her phone or something - sometimes at the grocery store or in Central Park, people would just stand there blocking the way while they texted. But she wasn't doing anything but standing there... staring at me.
An alarm bell went off in my head but instead of going back inside and talking to the police - number one, I hated the police, number two, she was just standing there and that seemed paranoid of me - I continued to approach my car, slowly and purposefully. I didn't want to give off the vibe that my anxiety was up, but I wasn't keen on opening the door to my car with her right there, in case she tried to jump in and hot-wire the car or... something. I didn't know what her deal was, but it bothered me.
So instead of sidling past her to my driver's side door, I came up to her, hanging out in front of my bumper. I put a hand on my hip, not wanting to appear judgmental - I was hoping maybe she would just ask for money and go away once I gave her a twenty - but also wanting my body language to express that this was kind of not on. "Can I help you?" I asked.
She smiled. Then she shoved me to the ground, and tackled me. "Yes. You can fucking die, tranny scum." Next thing I knew, I felt something sharp jab into my chest, then my stomach, and she spat in my face, laughing maniacally.
I tried to fight her off - I didn't want to hit a woman, but my fight-or-flight instincts kicked in. If I didn't get her off me, she was going to kill me. But the pain began radiating through my torso, burning through my entire body. I felt the knife go in again, and again. I could feel the warm blood spurting out of me, pouring. I tried to call for help, but there was a rattling sound when I opened my mouth.
I was starting to dissociate from the pain and blood loss. Time seemed to slow down - I watched the cops run out of the coffee shop before my attacker could escape. My attacker threw the knife down and I thought she was going to surrender to them... but then she pulled out a gun and pointed it at the police.
I watched her hit the ground several feet away. I heard sirens.
I closed my eyes and let myself fade.
The next few days passed in a blur of hospital lights and sounds, pain and numbness, fear and confusion. Finally, when I was with it, I got an explanation of what happened, first from the doctors, then from a hospital psychologist, then from Michelle.
I had been stabbed eight times across my chest and stomach. My attacker had narrowly missed puncturing my lungs, but I had to have my spleen removed, and I had a blood transfusion. I also had some gnarly wounds stitched up, which were going to turn into nasty scars.
What happened to me was a hate crime - a radical feminist group with an axe to grind against trans rights activists had doxed me, much to my surprise and dismay, and one particular mentally unhinged TERF decided she was going to kill me, so she stalked me for weeks and determined the best place to get a hold of me was the coffee shop. She had a twenty-page "womynifesto" akin to Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto, where my attacker blamed "trannies" pushing "the trans agenda" for why centrists/moderates voted for Trump in 2016, and gave a prophecy of doom that Roe would be overturned and women's rights would come under attack because of "traitors to womyn demanding special treatment". As a man who had been assigned female at birth, and was a civil rights lawyer helping trans people in particular, I was seen as an especially prized target for "turning my back on my sisters" or whatever.
She stabbed me because she knew it would hurt more and cause more fear than shooting me, but she wanted to commit suicide by cop and be remembered in "herstory" as a martyr for women's rights... hence the gun.
As such, I refuse to give you her name, I don't believe that people who commit such horrific crimes for fame and glory should have their names remembered. Nor will I be quoting any of her "womynifesto" beyond what I mentioned here.
You would think I would find it a relief that my attacker was dead, and couldn't retaliate someday if she got off with a lighter sentence, and you would be wrong. I thought it was a tragedy that she had been shot dead by police, and that nobody had intervened with her deteriorating mental state, nobody had seen any warning signs enough to prevent this from happening. I also knew that I was in danger, in case any of her "fellow travelers" wanted to finish the job, so when I was released from the hospital I stayed with Michelle and Kim for a few days, then we began the process of looking at a bigger apartment together, since there was safety in numbers.
Moving was exhausting, even though we hired movers. Not only had my Christmas been ruined by this, but I didn't even really get a chance to rest before I was thrown into having to scramble for my literal safety, knowing my address was out there and the TERFs and their strange bedfellows - like the alt-right - were out for blood. I also had reporters constantly wanting to talk to me - my name was all over the news. I made one prepared statement, and I asked for my privacy, yet over the following weeks and months I still had to dodge the press.
Not that I went out much. I was told it would take about six weeks to recover from my injuries - including needing to have my knife-ruptured spleen removed. That was just for the physical injuries, not the mental trauma. The ACLU office knew to not expect me back before April; I was on medical leave. I went to doctor and therapist appointments and I otherwise left the house as little as I could get away with.
I felt utterly demoralised. Even though I knew New York was a huge city and the chances of me being stabbed twice were slim, I still had panic attacks every time I left the house. I also got frustrated with my therapist, who tried to get me to do exposure therapy with returning to the coffeehouse where the attack happened - I had flashbacks and ended up pissing myself and hyperventilating, needed a sedative, and now had the humiliation of my public breakdown as a new unpleasant association with the place.
If I thought I had problems dating as a queer trans man before the attack, now I had scars all over my torso, and wasn't convinced that a prospective partner wouldn't be repulsed by them. I knew I could get cosmetic surgery to reduce their appearance, but it would also be expensive. And it would mean leaving the house, even if it had been more affordable. It would mean being touched by strangers, and every stranger had become possibly dangerous, possibly life-threatening, in my mind.
Things with Michelle and Kim got tense. Michelle was still my best friend, but I knew she hadn't signed up to be my caretaker, and dealing with my nightmares and hypervigilance and startling easy and me turning into a recluse who mostly stopped talking and just read books and played video games all the time, was wearing on her.
By April both my therapist and Michelle were pushing me to return to work for my own good - I agreed with the caveat that I began wearing a Kevlar vest under my clothes every time I left the house.
However, there is no time limit on how long trauma affects you - just because by April it had been four months and everyone else thought it was time to "get back to normal", didn't mean that I was quite there. At least once a week, I had to leave work early because I had a panic attack and flashbacks. I was also dealing with more memory problems between the anti-anxiety medication I was on, and the constant stress of having to pretend I was OK and had my shit together when the opposite was true.
One rainy day in May, I ended up choking after court. I couldn't drive myself home - which triggered a memory of 2012, when Steve and I were having problems and I had called a cab and had my Audi towed. I called Michelle and asked her to come get me, and once we were safely at home, Michelle gave me an hour to decompress before she stood in my bedroom door and said, "Anthony, we need to talk."
I joined her on the couch; she made chamomile tea. After a few moments of awkward silence, where I could see her composing her thoughts, she finally leaned forward, folded her hands and said, "OK, look. I like you, and I sympathise immensely with what you're going through."
"But," I said, knowing there was a "but".
Michelle leaned back, took a long sip of tea, and sighed. "I feel like... you need some sort of tough love or intervention. I'm not expecting you to be 'over it', I know shit doesn't work like that. But it's hard to figure out the right balance between pushing you too hard versus coddling you and letting you... slip away into a shadow of your former self. letting you stay stuck, like this, for the rest of your life." Michelle shook her head. "I don't know what to do for you, I only know that something, somehow, has got to give. You can't keep doing this - we can't keep doing this. My stress over worrying about you, and taking care of you when you're having a hard time, is causing me problems with Kim. I don't want to tell you to move out, I don't want to push you onto the street -"
I held up a hand. "But you're basically putting me on notice."
"The thing is, I don't really know what it's notice for. I know, for example, your job puts a big target sign on your back and that's an ongoing source of anxiety for you, but telling you to change careers at thirty-seven when you've worked so hard to get where you are feels kind of cruel. I could tell you to move out and hope that having to do more things for yourself, like shopping, would help push you back to normal, but it's more likely you'd just get delivery all the time and never leave the house."
I wanted to be offended by that, but I knew she was right, and I hated it. I pursed my lips and made a noise; Michelle made one back.
Michelle put her tea down and rubbed her face like an annoyed wet cat. Then she said, "I think I pushed you too hard to go back to work, and maybe you should take some more time off and get your bearings back."
"And... what. Stay home all the time, when you just got through telling me that bothers you?"
Michelle's lips quirked like she was thinking for a minute and then she said, "So... you've been living with the feeling of doom since the stabbing happened. Like... everything, everyone, is a potential threat and your days are numbered. Do you have a bucket list?"
"A what?"
"A bucket list." Michelle made a vague hand gesture, then realised this was more of an Americanism and though I'd lived here for almost four years I was unfamiliar with the term. "A list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket. Before you die."
"Ah, OK." I nodded. I knew there were things I did want to see and do before I passed on, but I had never made a formal list of them, just little wishes here and there.
"I think you should take some time off work, and spend the next few months doing things on your bucket list. And maybe doing those things will be like... exposure therapy without doing exposure therapy, like that shitty therapist making you go to -"
"Yeah," I said, not wanting her to finish the sentence. I didn't want to think about it.
That night as I lay in bed, waiting for my fatigue to catch up with my brain, I thought about things I would want to do before I died. I thought about a conversation I had with my uncle Nigel years ago where he'd recommended I take a year and tour Europe. While I had some money in savings, it wasn't enough to do a full tour for a full year, even if I roughed it with backpacking and staying in hostels. But I had enough for three or four months, seeing places I really wanted to go - France, Italy, maybe Germany and Switzerland... definitely Scandinavia, definitely Iceland. I thought to myself that I wanted to see the Nordic countries in the winter months to see the northern lights, but that seemed too far out since it was May, and I got the sense Michelle wanted me to get about this sooner rather than later. I sat up, grabbed my laptop, and Google told me that there was a chance of auroras in Iceland in September.
If I left immediately prices of travel and lodging would be astronomical, but July was far enough out to bring those prices down a bit. I could see the continent in July and August, the Scandinavian peninsula in August and part of September, and conclude with Iceland in September.
I was still paranoid about going places and doing things - especially with flying, knowing planes could be hijacked. But I also knew that the Nordic countries in particular had a very low crime rate and I was probably safer there than anywhere else.
I smiled to myself in the dark, for the first time in months. I would see a little bit of the world, and hopefully that would get it through my head that the world wasn't so scary and awful after all.
I had people who wanted me to die, and I was going to spite them and try to live again.
chapter 13 | return to A Place Called Home | return to Original Works | return to index