EERIE, INDIANA–Looking at his friends success in dating, a man tries to remember what all the girls in high school liked. It is in this moment that a local trans man, Charles Parker, realizes he does not know shit about women. I just don’t know what to do about it. They are utterly mysterious.”
Parker, who hasn’t had a steady partner in about 10 years, spent a few hours googling random questions, to no avail. “All these people say that I should know that I was raised as a girl, but I don’t remember what they talked about. I never went to a sleepover or anything,” he said. Parker, who is a moderately successful middle manager at a local manufacturing concern, is oblivious to the flirting of fully three of his acquaintances.
One of the women, a co-worker named Sarah Rakish, 32, spoke under the condition of anonymity. “I mean, he’s handsome as fuck,” she said. “I really was just going to ask him out when I talked to my friend Carla who had a thing for Charles before she got married; she said that she thought he was gay. But we don’t know. We still really don’t. But I’d date him. But how obvious can I make it?”
As an example, she pulled down the cut of her shirt even lower and called Parker over to her desk. She then shrugged as he walked away, as if that proved her point.
“I have no idea what to do,” Parker said. “Maybe I should sign up for Tinder.”