Chelsea Shorte - A New Normal

 

Hi, everybody. I often joke that my real father is the Dos Equis spokesman, the most interesting man in the world. I know you could tell from the bun, the man bun that I'm wearing. [audience laughter] It's not because my father was not in my life, he was, of course. It's just that my father never really accepted me as a young queer kid, like a young masculine kid. So, whenever I would ask like, “Dad, hey, can I get one of those pocket knives you got my brothers?” My dad would be like, “Mm. No.” Or, “Hey, Dad, that flag football looks really fun. Can I try it? I see my brothers are doing it.” And “No.” 

 

So, I thought, oh, the Dos Equis guy, he can teach me everything I need to know about being masculine. [audience laughter] Get the hair, get the clothes, just be the best dancer. Try to learn languages, know like a few phrases in each. Just be as interesting as you can and then you'll have it. You'll be the perfect stereotype of masculinity. You'll be charming, you'll always have something smart and fun to say. Perfect. But that's not it, right? 

 

My dad did a great job of raising me right. He gave me so much. He definitely sat me down and gave me all the talks I needed with my mom about, “Yes, being a Black woman, you have to be twice as good to get half as much.” When I started my journey as a young adult, I thought, all right, I got it. I'll do it all. If you've seen me before, you might know that I'm a stand-up comedian.

 

Well, one night I was coming back from a stand-up show in Arlington. I was driving home on Rock Creek Parkway to my apartment in the city. I was driving along. If you know Rock Creek, it's dark. There aren't that many street lights. It's like one. It's one lane in some spots. I was driving along, and whoop, whoop, police lights show up in my rearview mirror. I got immediately really nervous, because this was actually the week after Philando Castile was murdered and the week after Alton Sterling was murdered. It hit me all at once that this was the first time I was being pulled over, appearing as masculine as I'd been. 

 

Just because I got that feeling that this guy had been following me for a while. Because if he was following me for the reason, I thought he was, I had done that [chuckles] several miles ago. Okay. [audience laughter] So, why is he pulling me over now? Something's wrong. Something's wrong. The place where he pulled me over made me nervous too, because yes, everybody was nervous, especially with interactions with cops, Black people, interactions with cops at the time. And the place where he pulled me over in Rock Creek Park, there was no space for cars to safely pass him. There was no overhead light. I know that when a police officer is feeling uncomfortable, the likeliness of me getting injured goes up. So, I was super nervous. I realized my dad did not prepare me for this. How could he have known that I would be in this situation when he thought that I was always going to be his little girl? 

 

So, I did everything I overheard my father tell my brothers to do. All right. “Get your wallet out, put it on your thigh, put your hands on the wheel, don't move, turn off the music, turn off the car.” Came up to my window. He was like, “Hey, what you doing?” Blah, blah, blah. He asked me for my ID, my registration. This is something that sickens me to this day. He reads my license. He clearly wasn't paying very much attention to it, because he says, “Okay, Mr. Shorte, I'll be right back.” I pitched my voice up and I said, “Oh, no, it's Miss. It's Miss Shorte. Dressed completely like this.”

 

He should have been confused. [audience laughter] But the thing that makes me sick about it is that my instinct was to hide my gender for survival. Even now, looking back at that time, it strikes me how tough it is to be a Black person, to be a queer Black person in this world that's always changing, that's changed so much since I came out, since I was a kid, to how we respond to queer people, to being trans. There's so much about survival here that's instinct and luck and that I tried to hide my gender, hide it in Black femininity, which didn't save Sandra Bland. Why? Why did I come up with that solution? It's just, I guess it came from fear. 

 

The next day, I posted on Facebook about what had happened to me. I had the most amazing reaction. Everybody that said something loving and compassionate, they were all Black men who had been through a similar experience and were welcoming me into this twisted brotherhood. It was like masculinity come full circle. Thank you.