Tag: The Strangest Person I Ever Met

One day she walked into my office and sort of collapsed down into a chair and said, with a mixture of patient weariness and eager anticipation, “I just can’t wait till I get my tits.”

Rebecca (not her real name) was a volunteer at the GLBT Community Center where I worked and she frequently tossed off quips about where she was in her transition.

“You’ll get them,” I assured her, “and they will be beautiful.” Like, what do I know about boobs, I thought.

I really didn’t think it very strange that Rebecca would announce to me such a private anatomical detail. We were always chatting about something at The Center. This was just real life the way real people lived it. No more “strange” than if she’d said, “I need to buy a new car.” Though a good deal more personal. But then one cannot transition in private so why be secretive about the process.

That was her attitude and I was always impressed by Rebecca’s ability to be open and light hearted about her life and its changes when so many others seemed to carry theirs around like a heavy stone on their backs. Rebecca seemed not only determined to make her life her way but to enjoy it along the way.

I didn’t find that so strange—actually, more admirable than strange. But it occurred to me that there are people in this world whose eyes would have bugged out at a statement that, to them, would have been as strange as if saying she was from Mars.

I don’t really know strange people. At least I don’t think so. I once knew a guy whom I would call strange, as in weird. I assume he’s long dead since he looked like a walking corpse when I knew him in San Francisco in 1969—where knowing strange people was a daily occurrence. Frank lived in the flat below me and his full time and sole occupation seemed to be smoking pot and doing probably any other drug he could find in the dark confines of his room. One day he emerged into the sunlight and showed the most sallow and droopy skin I’d ever seen on a body still alive. Now, that’s strange, I thought, and not very appealing. I stayed away and always have from “strange people.” Weirdoes just don’t interest me.

But then some people would say that my life is pretty strange and full of weirdoes—faggots, dykes, radicals, mystics, people of integrity and ethics, animal lovers, even. I know a woman who once took a squirrel she’d hit with her car to a vet to try to save it. Now, that’s strange. I’d never do that.

One of my best friends is beyond the beyond, as the Irish say. He’s intersex. Now, we’re totally outside the binary, as he puts it. Pronouns don’t even apply here though, since you have to check one box or the other, David has always identified as male. With intersex people we have not just men, women and those transitioning, but suddenly the biological permutations are near endless. He used to have tits but lost them when forced into more male-inducing hormone treatments as an adolescent. He tells me he misses his tits and the fine soft skin he once had. He’s taught me a lot.

So, no, I don’t like “strange.” But in a way I require some strangeness in my friends. Strangeness is, after all, a very subjective judgment. What some call strange, I call interesting, unique, human, being alive, maybe even fun. Life is strange enough all by itself. And if you’re not even a wee bit strange, you need to fix that. Take a flight on the astral plane, listen to those voices in your head, drop everything and go on a meditation retreat, paint your toe nails purple, sit down and read a book. You know, weird stuff.

To some people, I suppose, I might be the strangest person they’ve ever met.

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.