An Exchange: Getting Sir'ed, Monkey's Paw Edition

The scene: A local grocer with a pharmaceutical counter.

It’s not overthinking a class thing, I don’t think, because pretty much everyone has to go to at least some sort of grocery store, so it’s not as if —

Just because almost everyone does some version of the same activity doesn’t mean it can’t be “a class thing,” and what in the hell “a class thing” is supposed to elide I’d like to know —

L’customeur: A stylish, Johnnie-come-lately transsexual, buying mostly onions.

L’cashiereur: A brisk, friendly woman, prepared and equipped to sell him those onions.

L’customeur, lurching between a handful of slapdash half-attitudes like “helpful Guy” and “so self-consciously Midwestern it’s almost Midnight Cowboy somehow” and “you think I’m a gal, it’s fine,” overshooting all of them and landing squarely in “just sounds like Clippy”*: Can I also trouble you for some multivitamins, please?

L’cashiereur: Are they for you? [The you was deliberate but not pointed, if that makes sense].

Me: [Okay. Okay, I get this, I know what this is, the “you” denotes “hey what’s your deal, are these prenatal or do you want the Centrums for Boys,” which is fine, she means nothing by it, fully expecting her to come back with Gal Vitamins]: Yes, they’re for me.

She returned with two boxes, at which point I thought, Oh wow, is she bringing me one of each? That’s sort of sweet, and also I really don’t know if the difference between sexed multivitamins is a big deal or not. Is it just more folate for women, or what?

A close-up reveals: Both multivitamins are for men. One is “for men” and one is “for men 40-plus.” This is the first time I have been “sirred” in seven months.

Forty-plus!!! Okay, bye! Goodbye, today’s newsletter is finished, I bought the REGULAR MEN one, which probably doesn’t have enough folate, but I don’t even know what folate does when it comes down to it, which is probably part of the reason why I take multivitamins for about three months every four or five years before forgetting.

*I went back and forth between “Is ‘sounding like Clippy’ a white transmasculine problem that has something to do with, like…the helping professions?? Or anxiety about ‘female socialization,’ which God I hope dies in 2020, or anxiety about test-driving a slightly different model of whiteness and not knowing how touchy the steering wheel is, or is it just a ‘me thing,’ and ultimately I landed on a ‘me thing, but with possibly-broader white implications.’