My “top surgery” (read: double mastectomy) is in 9 days. My wife, my friends and I, all women aside from – very recently – me, are all sitting around the pool, making plans. The group decides on an outing just a couple of days after my surgery, while I’m still certain to be homebound and some degree of helpless. “Wait a minute,” I say, “that’s right after my surgery. I need someone to keep me company.”

The athletic one among us stares me coldly in the eye and tells me, “Come on, you can handle it. You’re a man now. Deal with it.”

I know she’s (half) joking but it stings, nonetheless. So this is the way it is now? You see me as a man (THANK YOU!) so you’re going to lump me in with all of the other men in your life and however you feel about them. This is not a good feeling. Expectations are rising up like so many pointless, snarky challenges.

As a lesbian, I thought I knew women. Ironic.