Ben Bimbaum

Great! Looking 4ward to chatz!

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he grunted.

The ridiculous thing, of course, was that he had been trying to be supportive. He’d always got along well with Aidan, the receptionist at Arlo, Quill, Fitzgerald & Connolly, and it was an incontrovertible fact that he rarely got along well with anyone. Particularly anyone under the age of thirty. And so, when he had learned that Aidan was now Nadia – oh! it was the same word backwards! he just got that! – he had tweeted a note of support, despite how rude he – she – had been to him earlier.

@GeorgeCleverley Much love to Aidan @AQFC as he continues his transition. Brave, authentic & inspiring. #TransRights #TransPride #BraveNewWorld #TotalSupport

The shit had hit the fan almost immediately without him even fully understanding what he’d done wrong. All right, he admitted to himself, he knew what he had supposedly done wrong. He’d called Nadia ‘Aidan’ in his tweet. And used the ‘he’ pronoun. But Christ alive, was that a hanging offence?

The whole commotion hadn’t even been initiated by him, for his initial tweet had originally been liked by a couple of hundred people without any adverse comments at all. It was only when some idiot called @TruthIsASword had tweeted in response that things had started to kick off.

@TruthIsASword Sickened by this transphobic tweet. Man in ur position? Her name is NADIA. SHE is transitioning. Stop the hate, old man. #DeadNaming #MisGendering #Transphobic #HateCulture #BBC #CisMalePrivilege #BeKind #DropDead

There was scarcely a word of this that hadn’t made him want to rip his eyeballs from their sockets, but @TruthIsASword seemed to have hit pay dirt because his/her/its reply had been liked or retweeted more than one hundred thousand times over the subsequent twenty-four hours and it seemed as if everyone wanted a piece of him now. Who was this @TruthIsASword anyway? A man? A woman? A gerbil? There was no photograph, just some stock image of the word Peace with no biographical profile, other than ‘The truth is even sharper than a sharpened blade’, which to his mind seemed both tautological and absurd.

As the day had worn on, the number of messages coming his way had made his phone threaten to burst into flames, like a Galaxy Note 7 on a long-haul flight. His agent, Denise, inundated with messages on her own social media accounts, had called to suggest that he offer an apology, but he’d refused, asking why he should have to apologize for something that was done with the best of intentions.

‘Because these things are like snowballs,’ said Denise. ‘They have a habit of snowballing.’

‘Your linguistic logic never fails to impress me,’ he replied, wondering whether such pearls of wisdom really deserved ten per cent of his annual income.

‘Just admit that you did wrong, it’s a lot easier that way. People will accept it and move on.’

‘But I didn’t do wrong,’ he protested. ‘Does that count for nothing?’