Save As
"Bruh," that casual recognition of manhood, flew right out of his mouth.
I dropped into the dry cleaners the other night with a bundle of clothes. Well intentioned, I’d been driving around with them in my trunk for weeks, too tired, too busy or too distracted to drop them off.
Dry cleaning, like food, means love to Jews. The first time Elissa picked up my dry cleaning as a surprise, I knew we were serious. We’d been dating for six months. Unbidden, she’d brought me my shirts – boxed, no starch.
It was love.
But this morning, on her way out the door, she’d pleaded: “Joshie, please drop off the cleaning: I’m running out of pants!”
And so, I did.
“Hey, Josh! Long time, no see!” said the manager as I plunked down my haul: 10 shirts, five pairs of pants, three chino shorts, three sweaters and a tie that needed mending.
This fellow, the manager – a 50-something guy with sandy hair and a lined face that telegraphed disappointment and brought to mind Peggy Lee’s signature tune “Is That All There Is?”– had been eyeballing me from behind the counter for more than a decade, all throughout my transition, from femme-performing lesbian – “Parisian Zsa Zsa”– to gender-non-conforming (GNC) butch lesbian; then a suit-wearing, decidedly non-binary person; to Joshua, a bearded, middle-aged Jewish man.
He had been respectful but distant as he’d watched me those many years (and I pretended not to be watched). He was never rude, but curious and perhaps mystified by – and somewhat disbelieving of – the transformation unfolding over time before him.
But tonight, he was all in, invested, chatty in a way that cis guys sometimes are chatty – sports, news and weather-centric. It was a cold night in the San Fernando Valley. He wore a fuzzy, Polartec jacket zipped all the way up – the dry cleaner’s logo, a jaunty dog with top hat and cane, embroidered over his right pec – and I wore my stadium coat. The mercury was holding steady at 40F, arctic by Cali standards. The manager had lived in Colorado, he said, but it wasn’t this cold. Or, at least, he said, he’d been prepared for the Colorado cold with long underwear and a thermal t-shirt.
I’d spent some time in Colorado and knew what he meant: Beneath its wide sky and blazing sun, somehow the cold didn’t seem as cold.
In the Golden State, he said, he never knew what to expect.
We chatted on about nothing. And when we were finished, he said, “Nice talking to you, Bruh. Take care of yourself.”
Bruh. That casual recognition of manhood. No hesitation. It flew right out of his mouth: “Save as.”
And it surprised me, as it still does sometimes, when folks recognize me as sir, dude, bro or man. Because all of my history still exists internally. Every detail, all there. I recall it, thank you, G-d, like a past life. Yes. I’m no longer Cleopatra, living on the Nile; I’m Fred, the dentist from Des Moines – that’s the kind of external night and day that transitioning can be – but I perfectly remember what came before – physically, visually, viscerally.
And the “save as” is a compliment, really. My transition is complete. Zsa Zsa outwardly has disappeared into Joshua. There are no seams.
“There really is no trace of her,” said my friend Ruth who has known me for 20 years. “She is gone. And this is you.”
Save as.