It’s late spring 2019. A lot of big boxes have been checked off on the journey of transition.

I had been bugging my wife that we needed to paint the exterior of our house since the day we moved in. It drove me so crazy that when she left town one weekend, I painted the front of the house so that when I pulled up to the house, I didn’t feel as irritated.

Some of the delay was because I wanted to paint the house myself. I love painting – a canvas, a bathroom, a piece of furniture, it doesn’t matter. The transformative power of paint mixed with the quantified progress of a paint can becoming progressively lighter ignites my creativity and showcases my undeniable productivity. The finished product a record of my accomplishment.

As the years ticked by I realized the value of my time off, gave greater weight to the dangers of painting a two story house and the inconvenience of scaffolding and eventually caved.

We had a couple of home improvement projects in mind so we reached out to our favorite mortgage broker to discuss if refinancing made sense. In fact, it did. The plan was to refinance and then to open a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) because…long adulting story.

It is the middle of summer when the first refinance goes through. I am aware that during the signing of the closing documents, I will need to acknowledge all previous names I have used. I am aware that we had not yet updated the title to our house and it would have my previous name. I felt self conscious but the notary was very professional.

While the HELOC was supposed to happen pretty quickly afterward, there were some delays and we wouldn’t end up signing closing papers until October.

At this point I had been on T for 10 months. I was passing more often than not. The house was in my legal name. I knew I would likely still need to sign for aliases but, I figured this would be straight forward.

The notary arrived at our house and we began reviewing the paperwork. Well this is awkward. The paperwork is made out to my current first name, old middle and last. There are some pauses as the notary processes the situation. But again, she is surprisingly professional.

“Was this your name when you bought the house?”

“Parts of it…”

Next documents, now its my current first name, old middle name and then current middle name as my last.

Next documents, former first name, current middle and last.

Next: former first, current middle, birth last name

There was every imaginable combination. One document was even correct (even a broken clock is right twice a day).

The notary will follow up. I send a note to our mortgage broker letting him know how uncool this situation was. He is appropriately apologetic and appalled, and this bank is an outside entity.

Few weeks later, our mortgage shows up. Former first name, current middle and last. I am unable to make this right. I am certain I don’t have the self worth to make a phone call and have this fixed. I don’t want to talk about it. It is so frustrating. All the name change paperwork had gone through in January. Why is this happening? How is it that a financial institution, that should be pretty concerned with the details, managed to screw this up so thoroughly?

My wife, my hero, makes the painful phone call. And I am so glad it was her and not me.

“Hi, we just got our mortgage paperwork, and my husband’s name is incorrect.”

“Oh geez! Well let me see what we have goin’ on there.” The customer service person is from the midwest. “Oh my gosh, you are not going to believe this! We have you as married to a woman! That’s just ridiculous.”

---

Just taking a minute to remind myself that people are doing the best they can. Not everyone has had the privilege of seeing a single non-ridiculous marriage, not to mention, just statistically speaking, the relatively low percentage of same sex female marriages regardless of level of ridiculous…

---

Both Anji and the customer service person live through the phone call. But even though this is entirely their mistake, I have to send them a written request to change it. And it pisses me off. I kind of want them to try to collect from someone who doesn’t exist. But alas, after weeks of pouting and avoiding it, I wrote the stupid request.

Some of you may be thinking, “Why are you making a big deal out of this?” Because it matters. Because changing your name is a lot of work. Some of you who have changed your last name as a result of marriage have some idea of the work involved. Those of you who have changed your name following a divorce, may have a better idea. But it is more than the inconvenience of administrative steps.

At a time when I am striving to be seen – when I have gone to such great lengths to show the world who I am… Gender is so complex. I can’t just decide to be read as male. But I did decide to change my name. It is legal and tangible. It is a record of my accomplishment.

I don’t know how many paint cans are left but I already painted the wall of my name blue and people pretending it isn’t blue, when it is clearly, undeniably blue… I have so little to show for this change. But that wall is blue. And it matters.