Blocked

A Short Story by Jen Ives

I hate the tube, it’s always crammed like hell and my makeup runs off. I try not to get it, generally, and will happily sit on the bus for an extra hour if it means being comfortable and above ground. No choice today though. Running late for a job interview. I feel dumb about it, but if I don’t blow dry and straighten my hair properly I get dandruff, and nobody wants to employ a tranny with a flakey scalp. Better to just be a bit late.

What I dislike the most, is how all the seats face each other, so if you want to sit down you have to have some freak opposite you, staring you out, or looking you up and down, or trying to get a glimpse of your neck to see if they can spot an Adam’s Apple and confirm their suspicions about you. I’ve taken to just closing my eyes. Pretend to be asleep. Let ‘em look.

There’s one such specimen sitting opposite me. Some old fuck in a flat cap and a Union Jack T-shirt, gawping at me like some deep sea creature. The train stops, and the doors open at Piccadilly Circus, and he gets off, probably to commit a hate crime, allowing a new audience of commuters to bustle in. As they sit down, or find a place to stand, I look down at my phone and refresh Twitter. It doesn’t load, because we’re deep under-ground, but I try again anyway. It doesn’t work, but the attempt alone makes me feel slightly better.

I look up from my useless phone. Sitting opposite me, and also pretending to look at something on her useless phone, is a face I recognise. It takes me a little while to figure out where I know her from - she’s not a friend. Not an old colleague or neighbour. Early forties. White. Short fringe - thin brows. Unfashionably thin. Very fifteen years ago.

I notice the badge on her lapel - the suffragette colours. It was a good colour-way until it was ruined by bigots. I know who she is. I’ve never actually seen her in person before now - just as a profile icon on Twitter. I mainly know her as ‘TerfingMoon’, but her name is Victoria Delune - freelance ‘gender critical’ journalist. Full time, professional hater of trans women. I’ve had some fiery back and forths with her in the past. Ended up blocking her. A really fucking nasty piece of work.

She makes eye contact with me, and even though it’s hard to see to the untrained eye, I can sense her shit eating smirk, even in it’s earliest phase. The sort of subtle smirk that says: ‘I know what you are. You can’t fool me!’. I doubt she knows exactly who I am though, I don’t use a photo on my online profiles. I use a picture of Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl. A little inside joke for my followers. We have fun.

The train screeches and lurches to a painful stop halfway through a dark section of tunnel, causing some standing passengers to almost fall over. Every light goes out, plunging us into complete darkness for a few seconds. When the lights come back on, everyone looks flustered - with intrusive thoughts of terrorists and bombs and flooding and screams in the front of their minds. A French elderly man next to me asks out loud what is going on? I tell him not to worry - this happens sometimes. This is London, after all. But, in truth, there’s usually an announcement by now explaining the stop. My phone has no data, but the clock still works. I’m going to be late for this interview. No question.

Victoria is more focused on me than the train. I can feel her eyes, examining my body - making sure I’ve got bumps in the right places. Searching for clues. And they call us the perverts! The thing she doesn’t know though is that I’m no shrinking violet. If it were anyone else, maybe I’d leave it be - but her? I know pretty well who she is. What she’s done.

“Are you alright?” I ask her, feigning concern. Instantly it disarms her and she breaks eye contact, embarrassedly.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry I must have zoned out there”.

She didn’t ’zone out’. I wasn’t born yesterday, she just didn’t think I’d say anything. She thought I’d just continue to allow her to make me feel awkward and small. Not today.

“It’s just you were sort of smirking at me, so I thought maybe I had some food on my face or something?”

“No no, you’re fine”.

Am I? I never can tell these days. It took me no less than a hundred applications before getting an offer for this interview and now I’m going to miss it. Who am I kidding? As soon as they get a look at me, the job’ll be off the table. A higher skilled candidate would have magically appeared. I’m not ‘fine’.

I can see Victoria Delune open Twitter, then close it again, then open it again, then close it again. She looks at me, this time more earnestly. She’s trying to smile nicely at me - make amends.

“What do you think is going on with this train? How long has it been now?”

She’s Little Miss Chatty Pants all of a sudden. What’s the matter, doesn’t she have any music on that thing? Or one of her hate books to keep her distracted? I smile back.

“It’s probably just a signalling problem. It happens sometimes, I’m sure we’ll start moving again soon”.

She looks a bit off in colour. A bit pale. But it could just be the fluorescent lights down here. Other people in the carriage are also getting impatient. There’s a young guy with his hood up pressing the driver alarm button over and over - with no success. He keeps tutting and saying rar!

We sit there, waiting, for another couple of minutes. Then, another twenty. Then half an hour. I decide that I have to say something to her. It’s driving me crazy, because I know who she is but she has no idea who I am and it’s killing me. So I do.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?”

She squints, almost comically - like she’s peering over a pair of invisible glasses.

“Should I?”

“You’re TerfingMoon. We used to argue on Twitter a lot… I’m ServingGoldfish420.”

I can see her rolling through a mental rolodex in her mind, of all the people she’d called an ugly fat tranny online. She’s got it. She knows who I am.

“You blocked me!”

“Did I?”

“Yes you did…”

“Well, you’re pretty annoying.”

She was, too. It got to a point where, no matter what I posted about - be it a murdered trans woman in The States, a song I liked, or even just a declaration that it was my birthday, TerfingMoon would be there, poised and ready to tell me I’m a ‘man’ and a ‘child groomer’ and ‘ugly’.

“You lot can’t take criticism, that’s the truth of it”.

I remember why I blocked her. It wasn’t because I can’t take ‘criticism’. It was because she’d openly bragged about helping mount, and fund a campaign to have puberty blockers completely banned in the UK. When it had passed, she gloated and celebrated and didn’t seem to give a single toss about what it’d mean for young trans people in need.

“I blocked you because you’re a mean-spirited, deluded bitch”.

It felt good to say it to her in person. You can sling insults online all you like, but face to face - that’s healing. That’s therapy.

She definitely does look pale. I definitely said it loud enough to hear, but she didn’t really react. Her eyes are all over the place.

Victoria Delune just puked all down her Topshop blazer, and is now convulsing and fitting in the chair opposite me. Her eyes are glazed over and near enough rolled back into her skull. People around me start to panic. The French elderly man pushes the hooded youth out of the way and starts pressing the driver call button himself, as if his additional life experience means he’s better at pressing a broken button.

I rummage through Victoria’s bag to see if there’s any sort of EpiPen or medication, but there isn’t. All there is is a book about child genital mutilation, a set of keys and a bag of Skips. I instruct the young man in the hood to help me get her onto the train floor. We turn her onto her side and I move her arms and legs into the recovery position so she can’t choke on her own vomit and die like a legend.

The young man has taken off his hood and introduced himself as Foluke. He says he reckons he can pry the doors open, and I try to tell him that it might not be a good idea, but he hasn’t listened and already has them half open.

Suddenly, the train jolts back into life - causing many to cheer. Foluke has stumbled backwards and failed to get the doors open all the way. The elderly French man is on his knees, taking Victoria’s pulse. He says everyfing is bon.

As we pull into Oxford Circus, there are already paramedics waiting. I don’t know how they knew - I guess someone on the train has a better service provider than I do?

As everyone leaves, I roll up my coat and place it under her head and make sure to wait with her until the paramedics know exactly what’s going on. I might be asked to make a statement. Might get quoted in the local press, who knows?

What I want is to go with them to hospital and see this thing through to the end. To be there when she opens her eyes and say to her: …and you said I couldn’t take criticism? Really rub salt into the wound. Make her feel like shit.

But they don’t let me. Instead, when I reach the surface, I take out my phone and post a long tweet about what just happened. I share the picture I took of her in the recovery position. I add laughing emojis to it and the following caption:

To think - saved by a fat, ugly tranny. The shame of it.

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I am currently on the look out for a literary agent, and have many other short stories, and the first draft of a novel completed. If you are a literary agent, and would like to read more of my work, please email me at jeniveswriter@gmail.com