EMILY PRATT SLATIN

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She/Her/Hers Lesbian

Retired Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer, living in Vermont.

Other People's Confusion Somehow Became My Responsibility

August 14, 2026—Stamford, New York (Mom's House)

Last night I went to The Bel with Nora.

There was a woman at The Bel who, as the evening continued and the alcohol apparently became more influential than reason, decided it was her moral responsibility to inform the entire bar that I was transgender.

My family bought the house they referred to as “their mansion” in Stamford in 1986. Most people here have known me as Emily since my parents and I moved here. This became unexpectedly relevant.

She loudly announced that I had been born a man, had “played with my hormones,” and then put on a dress.

I told her no. I was born a girl, raised as a girl, and have lived my entire life as a girl. Then I pointed out that we happened to be standing in Stamford, New York, where enough people had known me since childhood that this was one of the easier factual disputes available to resolve. She leaned in and in a drunken voice said, “you full of shit you man.”

I told her to find someone. Anyone. Find anyone currently at the bar, or anyone who had lived in Stamford for any meaningful period of time, and ask them.

Like an idiot, she accepted the challenge.

Her first mistake was asking Nora. Nora confirmed that yes, I am female. Apparently Nora did not count. Nora is my friend. Of course Nora would lie for me.

The woman began asking other people. Some had known me since the beginning of the summer. Others had lived in Stamford for years. Eventually she asked the owner of The Bel, whose business is separated by two houses from Mom’s house. She still did not get the answer she wanted.

At some point, what had begun as an accusation became an investigation in which she personally selected witness after witness, received essentially the same answer from all of them, and somehow remained unconvinced.

We eventually ended up around the campfire behind The Bel, where she announced that I had obviously gotten breast implants. I told her that we were both women in our forties and there was no reason to continue speculating when the matter could be settled rather easily.

I offered to pull up my shirt and let her look.

The owner of The Bel shook her head, laughed, and shrugged in a manner I interpreted as two grown women being perfectly capable of resolving whatever ridiculous situation they had gotten themselves into without requiring adult supervision.

I pulled up my shirt, then my bra. The woman looked at my bare breasts, even feeling them with her hands in an attempt to see if she could find an implant or a scar.

She concluded that I must have had an excellent plastic surgeon and paid an enormous amount of money.

I told her it felt good to have a woman hand on my breast again as it had been a long time since a woman had felt me up. She looked at me with an odd look. I went on to explain that the last woman who touched my breast before her didn’t feel nearly as nice and the experience also came with a co-pay for my annual visit to the gynecologist.

She grabbed my arm and demanded the name of my surgeon. I did not have one to give her. She still insisted I was a man.

Eventually she went back inside the bar in search of someone who would support her version of my life. This was perhaps the worst decision she made all evening because she was now asking patrons at a bar from a bar in my hometown. The Bel is at the opposite corner of Academy Street from mom’s house.

She asked a lot of people. Everyone told her essentially the same thing. Emily had been born and raised a girl. I was also known as Crazy Emily growing up and was known to have had an asshole father.

By now she had followed me around long enough that approximately half the people from the bar had migrated outside to watch whatever the evening had become. Nobody else seemed particularly interested in whether I was female anymore. The matter had apparently been settled for everyone except the person conducting the investigation.

She then complained that I was too muscular, too built, and needed to lose weight because my muscle tone was simply too much for a woman.

I told her there was actually a fairly straightforward explanation for the way I am built. I was kicked out at sixteen for being a lesbian and having a girlfriend, spent years surviving largely by doing whatever it took to be useful, and eventually built a career in the fire department. Firefighting, rescue work, ladders, hose, tools, gear, and decades of physical work all leave marks on a body whether someone finds those marks appropriately feminine or not.

Then I looked at her.

“As for you, you’re so skinny you look like a drunk Eva Gabor who could hide under a flagpole for shade.”

The entire bar went silent.

For one brief moment, I wondered whether I had finally gone too far. Then she announced that she was truly insulted. And the entire bar started laughing and applauding.

A man came over to me immediately afterward, handed me his business card, and told me to call him because I absolutely had a future in stand-up comedy. I handed him my card in return and told him stand-up was not really my thing, but if he ever needed someone who could take an okay photograph, I was his girl.

This somehow became a legitimate employment conversation. He asked whether I had reliable transportation to The Bel and whether I could be there for an upcoming show.

I said yes. I own the mansion on the corner. I pointed at my New Balance sneakers. He suggested I add this part to the act. Meanwhile, the woman still had not finished.

At this point she interrupted the conversation I was having with someone else and complained that sometimes I came to The Bel dressed like a boy. I thanked her for letting me know that I was doing the whole lesbian thing correctly. And went back to talking with the man.

By then she had returned with a mixed drink in a small glass, gulped it down rather quickly, and eventually turned toward the crowd and announced that if I was a girl, as I and apparently everyone else claimed, then I should have a vagina.

“Wooo!”, she cheered, leaving the very last spoonful of bottled courage in the otherwise empty glass and gave a drunken toast to an audience of only herself.

I had become curious whether there was any evidentiary standard she could propose that she herself would be willing to satisfy.

“I’ll gladly get naked right here, right now. You go first.”

She objected. Of course she objected. Apparently requiring a woman to expose her genitalia in front of a crowd to prove that she was female became unreasonable at precisely the moment when the woman being asked to do it was her.

I pointed out that she had opened her mouth in an attempt to save herself and had only managed to dig herself deeper because she had made the mistake of challenging Crazy Emily in her hometown.

The crowd applauded.

My father had an entire alternate biography prepared for the child he wanted instead of the daughter he actually had. For years, other people’s confusion somehow became my responsibility to resolve.

Last night was different. I did not have to prove myself to anyone. The world is filled with people who would rather construct increasingly complicated explanations than admit they started with a bad premise. Alcohol apparently does not improve this process.

Eventually, the man who wanted me to photograph the upcoming comedy show asked what I charged. I told him I was not particularly worried about it. He said there had to be something I wanted besides credit.

I considered the question.

“Hypothetically, what if the most beautiful woman at the show comes up to me and gives me her number? Will you be okay with that?”
He looked at me.

“Yeah, I don’t care. It’s a 21-plus show. You’re an adult.”

I declined the stand-up career, but I took the photography gig. The remote possibility of getting a beautiful woman’s phone number remains part of the compensation package.

Apparently I am doing the whole lesbian thing correctly.