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than a dentist wants to peer into your mouth between the appetizer and dessert. Which is to say, not at all.

Dutiful Grandchild
    The only thing of any real use I was ever able to do for my grandfather came just weeks before he died. He and my grandmother had, in consultation with my parents and uncles, decided to leave their home in Florida (where all New York Jews go to retire) and relocate closer to their children. They chose a senior citizens’ residence building in Baltimore, a scant two miles from my uncles, and flew up to be in their new home while I drove their car north from Fort Lauderdale to join them.
    I arrived on a sunny Wednesday morning, the day before their belongings did. A company whose sole task it is to move senior citizens had charge of their belongings, and it fell to me to meet them in Baltimore and get all of my grandparents’ things settled, along with them, into their new home (and attempt to keep Grandpa from overworking himself and Grandma from driving everyone crazy by changing her mind every five minutes about such critical issues as which drawer the silverware would live in). After going in, greeting my grandparents, and giving a detailed recitation of my drive north, I prepared to go to the settlement office of the building to meet the people in charge of their new place, Susan and Becky. I shook out the wrinkles in my Hawaiian shirt, splashed some water on my face, and went down to the second floor to introduce myself, going over in my head one more time the introduction I had been rehearsing since somewhere in Macon, Georgia.
    It had occurred to me sometime around then that my grandparents would have arrived three days before me, and would therefore have given Susan and Becky an endless round of details and impertinent information about me, their eldest grandchild and only . . . granddaughter. Sharon. I wanted all the moving and settling to go smoothly, without any unpleasantness about who I was or what I was doing there or whether I was my brother or what-have-you. Beyond that, I had no idea what Susan or Becky had been told about me, or who they would be expecting. Somehow I felt fairly sure, though, that it wasn’t going to be someone like, well, someone like me.
    But I was determined not to let a little thing like my gender get in the way of doing this service for my grandparents. And so I planned. I wore a shirt with great big flowers on it, gay as hell but perhaps readable as feminine if you, uh, squinted your eyes just right. I practiced pitching my voice up a little bit, too, just in case that might help. But mostly, I went over and over in my head some wording that I thought might make it clear to Susan and Becky, and whoever else showed up with the stuff, that I was definitely and legitimately the granddaughter they had been told to expect, regardless of off-season changes since my arrival in the world. I’d just finished a final rehearsal of the details when the elevator dinged. Second floor. Out I went.
    I found my way down to the settlement office, confirmed the names on the door, and poked my head in, seeing two white women in their early forties both talking on two different phones. This was not in the plan. The plan had never been that they would get to have a good long time to have a look at me before I got started being charming and reassuring. I stood in the doorway, trying to look casual and yet still keen, while they finished their calls and took a leisurely look at my big ol’ sweaty self in their door-frame, and I worked hard not to flee or simper. At last, mercifully, Becky finished her call and turned to me. Unfortunately, I was still looking at Susan, and so I didn’t notice her finishing in time to start talking before she could say, “How can I help you, sir?”
    Normally, I do not mind this. Normally, in fact, I like it fine. But today it was not helpful—today it meant I was starting from a place of having to work with a gender attribution already instead