Pat

Those of you who remember SNL's character, Pat will know what I'm talking about, if not here's a link.

Six or seven months ago one of the companies where I work hired an employee I'm going to call Pat.  Pat is a sexually ambiguous individual, overweight, short hair, medium tenor voice, no noticeable sexual traits either male or female.  Pat is 19, closer to 20 years old, and holds down two jobs.  Pat's real name is one of those made up conglomeration of vowels and consonants, that Pat's mother heard on a TV show. The TV personality was a male, but the name sounds feminine.

When they hired Pat, one of his female co-works told me that they had hired a he/she.  She seemed disgusted by this, and I didn't push for more info.  I got to know Pat a little bit.

I was told the story about his mother giving him a girly sounding name.  He told me about getting picked on for being feminine.  He also told me about having a pacemaker for a heart condition.  With a goofy girly sounding name, pudgy appearance, tenor voice and some behavioral traits that probably developed because of being brought up by a dingbat female, this kid was starting out behind the eight ball. 

I wanted to help the guy out.  I tried to couch him about losing some weight.  I suspect that hearing that from a guy who is trying to lose weight himself might not be that effective, but it was the right advice.  I talked to him about using a manly sounding nickname, and gave him some other hints.

Pat had an incident with the pacemaker and was off work for three months.  While off from his job, I saw him in public with a semi-attractive girl.  They were sucking face and Pat had a hand firmly working the girl's boob like a batch of pizza dough.  Not exactly classy, or good technique, but definitely 19 year old male behavior.

Pat came back to work.  I didn't see him around much due to having different shifts and his being a part time employee.  Two weeks ago he told me he was facing a paternity suit from a girl he knew in high school.  Over the last week I kept hearing complaints from his boss and co-workers about his lying about doing various job related tasks.  It was obvious that things weren't looking good for Pat.

Saturday Pat walked off the job in the middle of the shift.

Monday I learned that according to the state of Wyoming, Pat is now, was born and has always been, female.

Some observations:

Everyone at work, except perhaps the gal I mentioned earlier, was willing to accept Pat at face value.

Given what I know about the employer, and the fact they knew about the transgender issue, Pat was given more of a chance in s/he's job than a straight person would have been.  From what I gather, Pat's boss has wanted to fire her since before the pacemaker issue.  This was due to a number of job performance related issues.

I never saw anyone mistreat Pat.

My dealings with Pat were always friendly.  I was never going to be close buddies with a kid nearly 25 years younger than me, but I genuinely wanted things to be good for him and his life to turn out well.  We seemed to be friends.

The most important observation I can make is that Pat is a liar.

Pat was accepted when it was rumored that s/he was a transsexual.  People were nice to Pat.  Folks were willing to accept and believe Pat's version of reality, or at least take it at face value.  Pat choose to create a façade and base all his/her relationships on the premise of that façade.  I think its interesting to note that Pat's biggest issue at work was lying.  Lying was so common that Pat's boss struggled with every conversation they had.  No wonder there was tension and bad blood at work.

I've known a handful of homosexuals.  I've been friends with a couple of them well enough to know some of their idiosyncrasies.  They weren't liars.  That doesn't mean they told everyone every little thing about their life or lifestyle choices, but they didn't blatantly create a false world to live in. 

Normal social interaction isn't possible when you can't have faith in what people tell you.