'Abby McEnany's Bathroom Breakdown' / AP Pobjoy
In the mid 2000s, when landlines were still plausible to have, I would always pick up on the second ring with a small hello. The other end usually being a friend of my parents or someone from their work, always saying the same thing.
“Hey mate, I’m looking for Mr. Pobjoy. I must be speaking to his son?”
The wind was knocked out of me every time. At 12 I hadn’t yet figured out how to navigate being misgendered. The next slow and gruelling thirty seconds were filled with a middle-aged male, whom I had never met, subtly begging for me to forgive his mistake.
With Abby McEnany, there was no forgiveness from either parties. Abby McEnany is the writer and star of the new semi-autobiographical show, Work In Progress: a comedy about a miserable older queer dyke who is sick of living her truth counting her days with almonds and whose therapist dies, but who on the flip side falls in love with a handsome young trans man who makes her realise that life isn’t that bad.
In one of the best scenes of the show, McEnany proclaims with no slip of the tongue, in a crowded public restroom, that everyone should just read a fucking book and leave her queer dyke self alone to pee when she is mistaken for a man. Whilst this made for great comedy, my eyes widened during my 12am Stan binge at the beautiful subversion.
Many queer shows and movies that I watched over and over again as a pre-teen, these moments made me clench my jaw at yet another gender-variant person being abused, assaulted or in cases murdered for being in a bathroom, a reality that still happens today. I was shocked to see someone who looked like me asserting themselves.
I do take into consideration that Abby McEnany, although made out to be a gender enigma in the show, is also white and cis, very well-known protectors - but it was refreshing to see a dreaded ‘bathroom scene’ flourish and sing with McEnany’s no-bullshit nature. Instead of people pointing the finger at her, she points the finger at them.
McEnany performs an act I was always too afraid to do. Correcting people.
Maybe it was fear of being verbally abused, or finally being seen as woman, but then having my identity back-pedal because I was a woman standing up for her rights. All the forty year-old mums in the bathroom line cornered that into a type of ‘crazy.’ When it comes to phone calls, bathrooms, coffee shops, libraries, parks and any public domain, confrontation is not necessarily welcome, particularly when people are trying to work out what genitals you have. My mumbled ‘no’ under the wrong pronoun, or the quick flick of my ID left people speechless. It was as if you were sitting in a fancy overpriced restaurant and saw from the corner of your eye a young mother trying to control her three year old, who has dumped pasta on his head. The strangers’ eyes turn and their whispers usually say, “Oh, I feel sorry for her.”
This comment also circulated in places when people asked about my gender. But I wasn’t the ‘her’, it was usually my partner at the time, or my mum. “Oh I feel sorry for her to be with that person, how embarrassing”
To any ex-girlfriends or my own mother, who I know would be reading this, thank you for keeping your understanding and patience in these times when I needed you.
But, to have a grown queer dyke bellow down the walls of the ladies room whilst standing up for herself was magic. It made me think I really could walk up to that one teenage boy at the train station who always eyed me when I went to the restroom. It made me think it was possible to throw queer history references at him and draw a diagram on a huge whiteboard that suddenly appeared in my fantasy, lapping over the different threads of gender expression. I would leave him speechless or reading over the latest issue of Butch Is Not A Dirty Word, and I.
Would.
Go.
Pee.
But laying in my bed that I hadn’t left for 48 hours, downloading Toilet Finder whilst watching McEnany point at the persecutors - it was a bittersweet thought.
Work In Progress, 2019
There is also another scene in Work in Progress that moved me. It was one of McEnany’s flashbacks to a previous relationship with a woman named Whitney. They are inside the hype of a 2007 lesbian bar during pride season. With only one toilet in the whole place disguised with a curtain, the same way a german shepherd would be disguised in a beret, McEnany takes the plunge with no other option. I mean, she was in a queer space after all. But to be extra cautious, she asks Whitney to wait by the make-shift door.
McEnany enters. Whitney is swept away by friends, and two lesbians make a snide comment at McEnany, reminding her that this is NOT the men’s room. In a moment of fear, panic, anger and wanting to throw up, McEnany confronts her partner who had ONE job and who left her high and dry."
Many of my ally friends also watched the show and didn’t understand this moment. Why was Abby so furious – Whitney only left for a minute?
For them, although they are some of the most understanding and empathic people outside my queer circle, it was seen as an overreaction. In my probably third re-watch of the show, my hands trembled over the keyboard to our group chat. My guts tangled into a mess of past memories and moments. Even in queer spaces. Even in lesbian bars. I too had felt the wrath towards the distracted Whitney who was the keeper of my fate.
McEnany taught me that you can’t just point the finger at the people in the bathroom, you must also point it at people who should be standing right outside of it.
Article written by AP Pobjoy. @appobjoy
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