Other variations included dyke, queer, butch, bitch, creep, once (oddly) faggot and other, unprintable, words. I hated it because of what was said to me: G et out! Was the nicest version. But I hated using the women’s room and not just because of being a boy. Grunge and androgyny were reasonably widespread, even in the sticks of Maine. And I wore the same t-shirts and jeans and flannel shirts and sneakers that I always wore.ĭown that hallway, I thought, which one? Easy enough to just go in the women’s room, give people a dirty look when they scowled at me. They’d been calling me Al for years, so I didn’t have to tell them that I’d changed my name from Alice to Alex. My short hair hadn’t been mentioned - I’d had it short third grade through seventh grade, after all, only growing it out at my mom’s insistence.
Afterwards, debating Denny’s versus Friendly’s, we veered down the hallway toward the movie theater’s bathrooms. We went to the movies, five of us crammed into someone’s mom’s sedan. And also because now at 17 I was, for the first time in my life, a boy. And, for me, because though I had known these boys since preschool, I had gone away every September for the last four years to a prep school. Second, because none of us owned a car and the nearest movie theater was 40 minutes from our rural Maine town. First, because we all worked odd jobs with odd hours. I’d been back in my hometown for a week or so, and a bunch of us decided to go to the movies together. Home for the summer from boarding school, that awkward and potent summer between high school and college, I was working as a dishwasher. I’d been living as a guy for about a year. The first time I used a men’s room with friends - friends who’d known me from before, friends who’d known me my whole life - I was a few weeks shy of my eighteenth birthday. And maybe they were washing their hands when I was leaving, and that’s why I’m thinking I probably didn’t wash my hands. Both at the urinals, and so their backs were toward me when I entered. I do remember that there were other men in the room. I can’t remember if I washed my hands or not. I made a beeline for the stalls, which were the same as the stalls in every women’s room I’d ever used in my first 17 years of life. In fact, I didn’t see most of it as I walked in, head down and turned slightly away from the line of urinals. I looked about 14, probably, with my hair freshly cut short, my head still feeling light and buoyant after getting rid of the ponytail I’d carried through most of high school. Judge John Aylmer adjourned the case to hear evidence from the boy.The first time I used a men’s room, I was 17 years old. The man told the psychologist: “I’m not that kind of person and I’m disgusted with myself. However, the psychologist added that he found no evidence of any interest in paedophilia.
He said a report from a forensic clinical psychologist found the man to be immature and introverted and that he has difficulty recognising his bisexuality. She added he is deeply ashamed of what had happened and is willing to accept any punishment that came his way.Ĭolm Smyth, defending, said his client is from a very respectable family who is shocked by what had happened. The accused man’s sister gave evidence that, up until this incident, her family never knew he was homosexual. In a later interview with gardaí, the man admitted that when the boy answered the door to him, he thought he was aged “16 or 17”. The boy’s mother came home unexpectedly and witnessed the sexual encounter. The garda said that when the boy was interviewed by specialist interviewers, he claimed that the man forced him to give him oral sex.
Garda Malcolm Hooks told the court that while the boy’s Gaydar profile said he was aged 19, another part of his profile read: “I’m not a porn star, I’m a 13-year-old.” The offence occurred on April 13th, 2015. The man has appeared at Letterkenny Circuit Court where he pleaded guilty to the defilement of a child under the age of 15 years.
The man, who was aged 30 at the time, arranged to travel to the boy’s home. The boy downloaded the Gaydar app and put up a profile of himself claiming to be 19.Ī man contacted the child a short time later and was told the boy’s mother would be out for two hours.