by Ivan Coyote
This next part is very important. Once you have cast the circle, you cannot think or say anything mean or nasty while you are inside it. Unicorns can smell cruelty on a person from a great distance, even lateral aggression, and they will not come anywhere near your circle if it smells mean to them. This is especially important if you bring more than one human into the circle. Everybody has to be kind to each other while in or near the circle, or it will never work. For example, if you laugh at your friend because they have to wear glasses or their pants are too short, or if anyone pinches anyone non-consensually, a unicorn can smell it and will avoid the area, sometimes for months after the incident.
STEP TWO: THE BAIT
Not very many people know this trick, so don’t go blabbing it to just anyone. I learned this from my grandmother, who learned it from her grandmother, who learned it from a lady in her square-dancing group. Unicorns have a sweet tooth. They cannot resist a jam and honey sandwich, especially with the crusts cut off. No butter, just jam and not too much honey, or the bread will get soggy. Make it at home and wrap it up so it stays fresh. This is your bait. Do not eat your bait. Make your own sandwich, just in case you get hungry.
STEP THREE: BE PATIENT
Place the jam and honey sandwich on a large stone or a stump in the middle of your circle of stones. Sit down quietly and wait. You should bring a book or some art supplies and paper, as it could take a while. Sometimes it can take days. Look at this time as an opportunity to get some reading done, or to paint a picture. Avoid playing video games or texting, as these devices have been known to scare off a unicorn, especially the older ones. Older unicorns have longer horns, of course, and know more about poetry and folk music.
If you are lucky and a unicorn enters your circle, do not make any loud noises or sudden movements. Just sit still and let the unicorn approach the jam and honey sandwich. Unicorns have often had bad luck when interacting with humans in the past, so don’t take it too personally if the unicorn has trust issues with you at first. Give the unicorn time to sniff the sandwich and have a little nibble.
While the unicorn is enjoying their sandwich, begin to speak to it in a slow, gentle whisper. Do not attempt to touch it, as it will bolt, and probably never come back. Just whisper to it gently. Tell the unicorn how magnificent it is. How shiny its coat looks today. Whisper that it has the longest eyelashes you have ever seen. This is the trick, you see, they have a weakness for praise. As long as you are saying nice things to that unicorn, it will be unable to leave the circle you have cast. It simply cannot walk away when someone is telling it how gorgeous it is. How handsome. What shiny, rippling haunches it has. It cannot help but continue to listen. Don’t stop. In fact, try not to pause much at all. It will eventually fall under your spell.
If you run out of things to say, you can also sing love songs to it, as love songs will work too, as will almost anything by the Beatles, especially their older stuff.
Again, do not attempt to touch the unicorn. Do not take pictures. Not only do cameras scare most unicorns off, nothing will show up in the pictures anyway. It’s a unicorn thing that scientists cannot explain. Of course, this works out well for the unicorns. They want people to think they are just make believe.
This last bit is the most important part of all: You must not attempt to physically trap, tie down, or otherwise capture the unicorn. Unicorns live most of the time in another dimension, and only visit ours rarely. Capturing one permanently is impossible, as the unicorn, if threatened in any way, will simply escape to another time-space continuum. And tenderhearted and delicate as they are, that particular unicorn might never risk visiting us in this dimension ever again. Please do not ruin someone else’s chances of experiencing a unicorn sighting here on planet Earth.
Again, this is only a plan for a unicorn trap, and comes with no guarantees that it will result in an actual unicorn sighting, or temporary compliment trapping. The last recorded unicorn trapping happened in Newfoundland just last summer, when two twin sisters and their downstairs neighbour held a unicorn in their magic circle on the beach for nearly three hours by singing its praises in three-part harmony that they learned in choir class.
There are no guarantees, but the worst thing that will happen is that you and maybe a few friends will spend some time in the forest or in nature being kind to each other and perhaps reading or drawing, after having picked up some litter and collecting magic rocks, so really, you have nothing to lose.
Autocorrect keeps trying to change the word butches to “but he’s.” Back off, autocorrect. We’re dismantling the binary here. Step aside and let us work.
BE CAREFUL IN THERE
So I know how it goes. You are eight years old and it’s Saturday morning and your mom dropped you off at your Brownies meeting at the old community centre and it was the Kozchek twins’ birthday so there was cake and red juice and who can resist that red juice, right? It’s so good. So you drank three glasses of the stuff. And now you have karate at noon and you have to get changed from your stupid brown skirt and uniform shirt and into your karategi and you can never be late for karate because it’s all about the discipline, right, and also you have to seriously pee because three glasses of red juice. So you duck quietly, you slip quickly into the women’s change room and it is full of the yoga ladies all fresh and sweaty from their class and when you walk in one of them squints her eyes at you and makes a face and says, “Excuse me, young man?” and then all of a sudden twenty-nine pairs of yoga lady eyes are on you all at once and you feel like you don’t belong in there at all even though you know in your heart that you do.
Or at least you know you belong in the women’s change room a little bit more than you belong in the men’s room. After all, you’re only what, eight years old? An eight-year-old tomboy alone in the men’s room? This could be even more dangerous than yoga lady eyes.
So there you are with twenty-nine yoga ladies all stopped staring at you, even though doesn’t anyone notice you are wearing an actual Brownie’s uniform? Isn’t that some kind of a clue right there? Can’t a girl cut her hair short these days? Even though your friend Joanne has her hair nearly as short as yours but for some reason this type of stuff never happens to her. Nobody calls her young man all the time and they let her pee in peace. What’s the deal?
But you are eight years old so you don’t have much to say yet about your more nuanced placement on the in-betweens of the gender binary, all you really know is that you are going to turn around and you are going to go outside and you are going to pee in the willow bushes by the green belt next to the parking lot because this is easier.
Then you will get changed for karate behind a green minivan and hope that there are no perverts lurking around or rubbernecked boys trying to catch a glimpse when their moms pick them up after hockey practice or Beavers, right? All you know is there is no bathroom door with the silhouette of someone who looks anything like you on it.
And how do I know all of this? Because I’ve been there. I want you to know you are not alone. You feel like you are the only one in Moose Jaw or Creston or Canmore or Prince George or Whitehorse or Fort Smith or Bishop’s Falls, and well, maybe you are. But I promise you that you are not alone. I’m here. I’m here and I see you. I feel you. I was you, and I still am you.
It’s not you, it’s them. It really is. And those boxes, those binaries, those bathroom signs, those rigid roles, they hurt them too, they do, they carve away at their souls and secret desires and self-esteem and believable dreams and possible wardrobes and acceptable careers just like they do ours, just it’s harder for them to tell it’s happening on account of no one is hassling them in the bathrooms every other day about it. They somehow just fit better in those boxes, so they can’t see what fitting has cost them, not like we can.
I know what you are thinking, and you are right. This all could be solved with a single-stall, locking, gender-neutral washroom in all schools and so-called public buildings. It could. It seems simple to you, becau
se it is. We all have gender-neutral bathrooms at home. We just call them bathrooms.
You will ask for a safer place to pee and they will say things like we are talking about this next month in a meeting, and we are weighing all of our options here, or, we are busy assessing whether this is a need or a want, or they will tell you that it is too late or too expensive or against their religion and besides, why can’t you just be more like all the other little girls or boys? If you could just be different, they will say, or is it less different, then none of us would have to accommodate any of you.
I know, it’s really hard not to just hear it like somehow you just don’t matter as much, and sometimes it might feel better if they just came right out and just fessed up that your safety and your right to have a place to get changed for gym class just doesn’t matter as much as theirs does.
You will be asked to be patient, and you will be, because you have no other choice. Real change takes time, they will say, and can’t you ask more politely? Your anger will not help anyone listen or understand, they will tell you. But in the meantime, where do you pee, you wonder? Your bladder can’t wait and you’ve got karate at noon.
So. Here is some of what I have learned to do, over my forty-seven years so far of bathroom troubles:
Head for the first stall closest to the door. Smile and make eye contact if you choose the ladies room, avoid eye contact if you go with the men’s room. Try to act like you belong there, even though they have made it quite clear that you do not. Try not to act scared.
Try to remember to breathe.
Engage your superhuman powers. Try your cloaking device, your force field of invisibility, or your gift for shifting shapes. Open the eyes you have in the back of your head. All of these powers are somewhat diminished under fluorescent lights, and lowered if you need a snack or have your period, but your many superpowers can and do help.
Keep smiling and be polite if anyone speaks to you in there. I know this one is hard, especially if they are yelling at you or telling you to get out, or gasping or gawking or whispering, or calling security on you. It’s not fair that you have to remain calm when they are being rude, or calling you names, or hitting you with their purse, but trust me, things will go better for you if you can manage to stay polite and smiling. Forgive yourself immediately if and when you grow impatient with them.
Also, try finding a bathroom, men’s or women’s, on a quieter floor, or a different part of the building. Remember it for next time, too. Of course a lonely bathroom in a deserted part of the building could be dangerous in a whole other bunch of ways, so weigh your options and trust your intuition.
You could also try bringing a friend in with you. My cousin and I do this thing sometimes, she has very long curly hair and good nails and as we walk in she asks me in a very loud feminine voice if I have a tampon in my purse she can borrow. Sometimes this works, but maybe if you are only five years old you could change the wording up a little? You are going to have to learn to think on your feet.
I want you to know how it hurts me inside that you are only five or eight or thirteen or thirty-five or eighty-nine years old and you are already, or still, or perpetually having to navigate all of this just to go to Brownies or karate or math class or the doctor’s office or college or the movies. At least we are safe in airplane bathrooms. If we can make it through those new machines at the security gate.
Do I sound tired? Maybe today I really am. Maybe I just got off of the road and I had to pee in a lot of strange bathrooms. Maybe I’m forty-seven years old and sick to death of smiling and being polite about it all. Maybe change feels too slow and too far and too fallible to me today. But know this: it’s them, not you, and I see you. There is nothing wrong with you.
And one day, you, my little friend, will tell an eight-year-old tomboy or girlboy or other brave and magical gender inventor about how there used to be only two kinds of bathrooms to choose from, and you had to fit yourself into a box to safely go into one, and your little friend will laugh and not believe you. They will laugh and say how ridiculous, because then where would someone like me go to get changed for karate? That couldn’t be, they will say, and you will laugh too, because they are right. That just couldn’t be.
WILL YOU COME WITH ME?
E
All right boys, listen to me
B
All right girls, here’s the scene
E
It’s a beautiful night (yes yes)
B
The stars are out (yes yes)
E
I’m on a date with my baby
B
And then I get that feeling
AB
You know the one I’m meaning (tell it tell it tell it tell it)
So I say
B
Can you check out the bathroom situation with me?
C#m
Are you in the wrong place?
F#m
Look how you are dressed
What do you expect?
C#m
Are you in the wrong place?
F#m
Look how you are dressed
What do you expect?
G#m
The people say shriek
B
You’re such a freak
B
I can hold it, I can hold it, I can hold it
E
Maybe I can wait till I get home
C#m
Maybe I can wait till I get on the plane
G#m
Baby can you check out the situation
AB
This happens every day
C#m
Will you come with me baby?
G#mA
Will you come with me
C#m
Will you come with me baby?
G#m AE
Will you come with me
All right boys, listen to me
All right girls, here’s the scene
It’s a beautiful night (yes yes)
The stars are out (yes yes)
Are you in the wrong place?
Look how you are dressed
What do you expect?
Are you in the wrong place?
Look how you are dressed
What do you expect?
The people say shriek
You’re such a freak
I can hold it, I can hold it, I can hold it
Maybe I can wait til I get home
Maybe I can wait til I get on the plane
Better bring my baby in with me
Safety in numbers then
Will you come with me, baby?
Will you come with me?
Will you come with me, baby?
Will you come with me?
Woman in the women’s bathroom at the ferry terminal: “Um, excuse me, sir ...?” Me: “Could you please wait until after I pee to tell me I’m in the wrong bathroom? I just worked all day and then drove for two hours.” Her: “Of course. Absolutely.” And she did wait. She waited by the sink until I came out of the stall, and then she apologized to me at length. Said she was sorry, and that her grandson was exploring his gender identity and that she should know better. I asked her how her grandson was doing. She said he was a beautiful person who played piano and was a great artist, too. She said she loved him or her very much. She thanked me for my patience. I thanked her for her honesty and good heart. Asked her to please give my best wishes to her grandchild. Then we smiled at each other and went back to our vehicles.
NONE OF THESE WORDS
Ratchet set. Grease nipples. Plaid. Harris tweed. Cufflinks. Suede. Cedar shavings. Solid teak end tables. Drill press. Oblique muscles. Coveralls. Pocketknife. Pocket square. Roadmaps. Hatchet. Hand saw. Handkerchief. Haberdashery. Remote control. Control. Power. Power steering. Swim trunks. Button down. Plain brown belt. Drum kit. Rock. Rock hammer. Level. Chisel. Chiseled. Three-piece suit, three-way switch wiring diagram. Collars stays, razor strop, and chivalry.
None of these words
have a gender.
WHIPPER SNAPPER
I never saw them touch much, my parents. If I ever walked into the room and his hands were on her hips, he dropped them. Looked out the window or at the floor. They never said out loud that touching each other was a bad thing, but somewhere along the way it seeped into me somehow that it was. Something you didn’t do in public. Something private.
Like, really private.
My uncle John had this girlfriend, named Cathy. I’ve written about her before, about the time she broke her leg so bad the bone poked through her shin and she barely even cried, hardly at all. About how she taught me how to ride a horse, how to get right back on when you get bucked off. Dirt between your teeth and tears still in your eyes. I knew it was a metaphor for something bigger even back then. I knew she was teaching me something I was going to need later.
What I’m thinking about tonight is her hair. How she kept it wound tight in a braid most of the time, but how this one night when her and my uncle were still building that house out on the hot springs road, she let her hair all down, perched on a stool at the end of the table, which was really just a sheet of plywood screwed to two sawhorses. The walls were still bare studs and pink fiberglass insulation covered in vapour barrier and the whole place smelled like pine sap and sawdust and the fire burning in the stone fireplace, and well, if there are any better smells than that out there then I don’t know them.
Cathy had just gotten out of the shower and she shook her wet hair all out and it came right down to the backs of her knees. Like Rapunzel, I remember thinking, only way cooler. My Aunt Cathy would never need rescuing. She would figure out a way to stay out of the locking tower.
