I was so pleased that I finally got EnergyAustralia to change the name associated with my account that I didn't pay much attention to what they had changed it to. This turns out to have been a significant blunder on my part. A couple of days ago they emailed me to say that they can't apply the usual low income concession to my next bill because the surname they had for me doesn't match the name on my government concession card.
Oh, for…! There's only five letters in my surname! How could they have managed to drop one while copying it from my birth certificate to their database?
I phone them, and then I email them. It turns out they also have an issue with my address, so can I send them some proof of my address as well? So I go looking for another utility bill with my street address on it, and that's when I discover that Greater Western Water have misspelled my first name!
Is this some kind of conspiracy? I storm off with my laptop to the library to try to get some work done, but I'm so cross that I can't concentrate. The boy at the desk next to me sneezing and sniffling into a fistful of tissues doesn't make me feel too great about being out in public without a mask, so I go home for an early dinner.
In the evening I go to a meeting at a pub up the road in Carlton. Everybody's awfully nice and middle class, but I feel even less like socialising than usual. Anyway, my gently simmering grumpiness is showing in my voice and giving me severe gender dysphoria, exacerbated by by one particularly nice and well-to-do woman misgendering me, capping off what has been a banner week for misgendering; a real bumper crop of inappropriate pronouns.
I sit off in a corner hoping to generate detectable "don't talk to me" vibes while a jolly nice fellow delivers a jolly nice talk on a jolly interesting topic, and as he's winding up I slip away into the night before anybody dares approach me.
I stay up writing an email to my dear friend Emma, framing the events of the last few weeks in as lighthearted a way as possible, which cheers me up a bit, but now it's three AM.
I get a few hours' sleep and wake up with that blasted boy's sneezes and sniffles! My eyes are sore, and I can't see clearly out of the left one. That's a new symptom for me; a novelty, at least. Eventually I conclude that I shouldn't try going anywhere and resign myself to doing some laundry and listening to the bass notes of next door's stereo all day.
I take my bag of washing downstairs to the communal coin-op machine, which turns out to be in use. I go up the stairs to the communal coin-op machine on the top floor, which is also in use. So I take my washing back to my flat and wonder whether it may be easiest just to get the New South Wales Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages to change my identity to suit existing expectations.
Hi, I'm Mr Katie Swan. [Sniff!] Pleased to meet you.
