•  social security card: margaret megan boyle

•  passport: megan matlock boyle

•  driver’s license: margaret megan boyle

i sublet a room in brooklyn from december 2011 to march 2012. as i was walking to the train one of the first days i was there, i saw a storefront covered in ‘CDL license, driving school, truck driving lessons’ and other words. i signed up for a CDL preparation class with a mostly polish-speaking man. i liked him. we met for one-on-one lessons for about two weeks. he said he would teach me how to pass the written CDL test, but before i could get behind the wheel of a truck for driving lessons, i would need to transfer my maryland driver’s license to a new york driver’s license.

i brought my maryland driver’s license, social security card, birth certificate, and passport to the new york DMV. they wouldn’t give me a new york state license because of a ‘four-point system.’ i needed one ‘proof of date of birth’ (birth certificate = zero points) and four points of ‘proofs of name’ (u.s. citizens usually use their social security card [two points] and passport [two points]). they all have to say the same name.

the first time i went to the NYC social security office i was drunk and had brought whiskey in a flask and saw a sign that said ‘no liquids permitted’ so i went home. the second time i was sober. i waited in a holding tank area, downstairs in a belted maze-like line at the front of which was a security gate, guarded by police. the police would periodically point to heads near the front of the line. these were the heads permitted to pass through the security device to another waiting area upstairs. when i reached the second waiting area i was instructed to get a number from piece of paper by a device. then i stood behind the person i had stood behind in the first line, in a similar but tenser-feeling belted maze-line. the room’s perimeter was comprised of people sitting at desks behind bulletproof glass. the line-waiting mass stood in the center of the room, about twenty feet from the wall of desk stations.

when my number was called, i handed a tired-seeming woman my driver’s license, social security card, baptismal certificate, and birth certificate. there was some kind of las vegas souvenir on her desk. i tried to exude apologetic ‘i understand’ mental waves to her. she looked at my papers and typed into a computer, making ‘something is wrong’ faces. she said ‘you got a double name?’ i said ‘i don’t know, what is that?’ she said ‘why they give you a double name?’ i said ‘i don’t know, i’m just trying to get all my IDs to say the same thing as my birth certificate.’ she continued making ‘something is wrong’ faces at the computer. she tore up my old social security card and said i would receive a new card in the mail in two weeks. i said ‘will it say the name on my birth certificate?’ she exhaled audibly and looked me in the eye and said ‘no m’am. you have a double name. your social card is going to say the same name as your driver’s license. if you want us to change the name on your social you need your driver’s license to say the name you want us to change it to.’ i said ‘so wait, my new card will say the same name as my old card?’ she said ‘that’s right’ and something about how i had given her the right to tear up my old card, by applying for a new card.