busybee Writing Dream log

I was in a secret relationship with an architect who presented himself in a very Willy Wonka-esque way. He had a great quality of showmanship, and parlayed this into becoming president of the United States of America, with me as his vice president.

Several times I explained to him Willy Wonka’s whole deal, and he kept on pretending to not understand or not see how this applied to him. After explaining specifically Gene Wilder’s take on the character, with the cane and the somersault to tell the audience that he was lying, I came to realize that this one was lying too. I still loved him, but I was suspicious of him.

One evening we were taking a stroll around the White House grounds, when we heard a sound coming from a glass container that we used as a storage facility. I saw a shadowy figure trying to cut small holes in the glass, and the president and I split up to take a look. I managed to subdue the figure; she was an Italian spy, dressed in black and masked. The president ran off for safety while I struggled with her, and when I unmasked her, she turned out to be a chinchilla.

“What were you doing?” I asked the chinchilla.

“I am trying to prevent a president from being the president.”

“Are you trying to murder my husband?!”

“No… back in time. The fifth president. They should not be a thing.”

We had a struggle. I accidentally stepped on one of her paws, causing her to yelp in pain. I felt bad for her, and offered to take her home.

On the way we discussed anarchy, and I admitted that I was only vice president as a point of convenience and distraction, and that I was myself an anarcho-socialist, and I was very interested in her ideas about how to bring down the presidency, and the government as a whole.

For hours we tried to navigate through the Washington DC subway system, and as we talked I became increasingly self-conscious about my vice presidential ID badge hanging around my neck.

Finally we made it to her subway stop, and we agreed to meet up for coffee later.

“So, hey, I have a friend with what I think is a pretty… unique situation. You’re pretty savvy with this pronoun stuff, right?”

“Hm, I try to be, anyway.”

“Okay, so, this friend was born male—”

“Assigned male at birth.”

“… Right. Anyway. Assigned male at birth, totally identifies as male, one hundred percent happy being male. Wears men’s clothes, uses the extremely masculine name given to them, is completely secure in her masculinity, completely normal cis man.”

“Wait, so uh… okay, ‘normal’ is loaded, but… ‘Her?’”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. She prefers to be referred to with she/her pronouns.”

“… Huh. Is there any particular… reason for that?”

“Not as far as I can tell! I’ve asked her about it and she said that she just… likes it.”

“But… …she… doesn’t identify as a woman at all?”

“Nope. And I thought that maybe she is trying to, like, normalize the idea that language is a social construct or something, or push against the idea that ‘he’ is the gender-neutral pronoun, but nope. She just likes the sound of it.”

“And you’re sure she isn’t, like, trans or anything?”

“I mean, I asked her if she feels bad being called he/him, and no, she doesn’t seem to experience dysphoria around her gender or around being called he/him. She just.. prefers she/her.”

“Huh, okay. Well, I mean, anyone can choose to have whatever pronouns they want, and we should all respect that, no matter what the underlying reason is…”

“That’s just the thing, everyone around her does respect it. Even if they’re awful about misgendering actual trans women, for some reason they’re 100% on board with using she/her pronouns for this… well, totally nor— … um, extremely cis man.”

“Aside from the pronouns.”

“Yes, aside from the pronouns.”

“Huh. Well, um… this is an interesting situation, I think, but it probably shouldn’t be interesting. It’s kind of refreshing to hear about? I mean, sort of. I wish people would respect my pronouns that easily, but…”

“Yeah, it’s like the dog thing.”

“Dog thing?”

“Y'know, how people trip over themselves to make sure that they’re using the correct pronouns for a dog? That doesn’t even know what pronouns are and doesn’t give the tiniest shit about them? While still misgendering trans people because it’s ‘so hard?’”

“Ah, yeah, that. Well. Okay. So what’s the problem your friend is having?”

“Oh, she isn’t having a problem at all. I’m just wondering, do you know what this situation would be called?”

“Sounds like she’s a… she-male?”

“…”

“Yeah, I only realized what I was saying as it was leaving my mouth.”