Reasons That I, a Trans Woman, Have Had to Use the Bathroom at My Workplace

“House Speaker Mike Johnson declared Wednesday that lawmakers and staff will have to use the restroom corresponding with their biological sex, a statement directed at Sarah McBride, the first transgender person to be elected to Congress, months before she is set to arrive on Capitol Hill.” — AP

I needed to fix my lip liner, which got smudged after I drank coffee from my mug.

I had to go number two so urgently that it outweighed my crippling social anxiety around doing it at work.

I hadn’t applied makeup before coming into the office and wasn’t planning on wearing any that day, but then the cafeteria worker I chat with almost every day saw me and asked me if today was my first day here, so I needed to apply a full face of makeup.

I had just received a text from my situationship, whom my coworkers all know about and hate, and whom I falsely claimed to have blocked. I wanted to reply to that text, but if I were to do so at my desk, my coworkers might notice and ask who I was texting. I’m a bad liar, and the jig would be up, so I had to go into a stall to text back.

I was about to eat at the cafeteria and wanted to wash my hands before.

I accidentally touched a seat on the A train during my commute to work and felt something sticky against my skin, so I needed to lather my hands in soap and vigorously scrub until I removed the two outermost layers of epidermis.

The woman who sits at the desk next to me had brought a plate of crackers and tuna salad back to her desk from the cafeteria and eaten it before leaving for a meeting and left the plate with bits of residual tuna salad at her desk, and the whole area reeked like tuna salad, and I needed to leave for a few minutes.

During a work meeting, I touched my chin and felt a singular hair, so I needed to excuse myself, look closely in the mirror to assess the damage, pluck the chin hair in question, and then decide whether I needed to quit my job.

A male coworker said something unhinged in a meeting, and I needed to debrief with the other female coworker who was in the meeting.

I discovered that my parasocial work crush was visiting my office for work on-site, so I needed to apply the fancy solid perfume that I bought from Diptyque with my first bonus check.

I needed to go into a stall and clear the search history on my Instagram because I had told my coworker that I was going to show her a funny page, and if I were to do so without clearing the history, she would see that my recent searches were the situationship I told her I blocked and a bunch of pages for IBS-friendly recipes.

During lunch, I leaned forward and failed to notice that the work badge I wear on my lanyard had dipped into the bowl of mapo tofu that was on my tray. Then, when I stood up, the work badge had smeared mapo tofu all over the crotch of the brand-new light blue linen high-rise pants I wore for the first time that day, and it looked like I was having an internal hemorrhage, so I had to go to the bathroom to try to wipe it off with paper towels.

I had to pee.