10/03/2026
🌈 It’s Petaluma Pride next weekend and I’m honoring it by sharing this photo of me and my high school girlfriend.
🏳️⚧️ Gather round children and listen to this tale from the days of yore, 30 years ago. Back in the last century, gender as a construct wasn’t a thing. Being transgender was barely a thing. Nobody was talking about how to do anything, and the internet was just a baby. If you wanted to meet other g**s, you placed an ad in a newspaper, and met up with them in person.
🎉 My girlfriend lived across town and since she went to a different school, I decided I could attend her prom incognito. I felt it was in my best interest to pass as a boy, rather than attend as G**s and become the focus of the evening.
🕺 So you know what your girl did? She wrapped her torso in half a roll of duct tape before heading onto the dance floor. Some of you know how this ends. We had practiced some very cool swing dance moves where I tossed her around, all 90 pounds of her making me feel quite burly.
💨 After only a few amazing twirls to Zoot Suit Riot, I was gasping for breath and in no mood to be delicate. We staggered out of the ballroom and into the ladies’ room, barely making it into a stall before I began tugging at layers and buttons. She turned me back and forth, searching for the end of the tape, and then ripped it away until I could breathe again. God only knows what sort of sounds they were hearing in the doorway.
🫢 By that time we became aware of overlapping voices from outside.
“A boy went in the girls bathroom.”
“There’s a girl with him!”
I redressed quickly and we busted out through the crowd of kids and chaperones, our faces red and our hearts in our throats. My torso now unhindered, a mother-chaperone grasped the situation, cleared her throat, and tried to divert attention elsewhere. We took that opportunity to go, a pile of used duct tape remaining behind on the floor.
📕 And that’s the story of how I became notorious at a school I didn’t even go to.
Happy Pride!
