On June 20th, year of our Lord 2025, I did the stupidest thing I have done in my entire life. This was shortly after trumped by June 22nd with the stupidest thing I have done in my entire life.
I’m calling this a stunt, because, for all intents and purposes, this was a stunt. A stunt with very specific and pointed intent, but a stunt nonetheless.
I crossed a border that is actively detaining trans people, to prove one point in a talk where I say that trans men are invisible.
Before we go any further: I do not, under any circumstance, recommend anyone else do what I did here. I did this because of a convenient lineup of circumstances. And many of those circumstances were riding on complete unknowns.
When I was invited to speak at NarraScope this year, the talk I’d submit was a postmortem of SEXTUPLE L. And, as I realised I had an option of remote or in-person, looking at that border, and how trans men are so often forgotten in the systemic whipping of trans women, how an in-person talk would be the more powerful statement.
That’s the problem, with being a writer. You start seeing stories and patterns everywhere and in everything. Then if you have the guts for it, you start letting them affect reality. My pen’s led me to places I wouldn’t go with a gun.
I considered the viability of me doing this. I pass without fail thanks to facial hair and my voice. I’ve had top surgery and won’t set off body fat scanners. All my internet presence is not under my legal name. I’d been to the US more than enough times in the past, and knew exactly how to navigate the hellscape of questions crafted by the DHS. I am a perfect example of the invisible trans man.
And then you think, I’m white enough to get away with this.
Welcome to the United States
A few months before Narrascope, after I explained to my parents where I was going, my mum asked me: “Will Trumpy let you in?”
Context to this, for those reading who aren’t British. ‘Trump’ over here is a softer way of saying ‘fart’. Putting -y on the end of it works much the same. This was a question with an explicit derogatory edge.
“Yeah,” I said, “there’s an M on my passport.”
What I should have said, if I was telling the whole truth, is that I don’t know. Because I didn’t. I knew what was likely, but with so many spanners thrown into the works, I don’t know what the actual outcome would be.
A month after that, I’m applying for a visa. I’d done the ESTA once before on my own, and watched my dad apply for it countless times for when we’d go to see family in Texas. I’m still wondering if I’ll be able to see San Antonio again.
It asked if I’d ever changed my name, and I simply said no. It asked for my social media, and under my legal name, there was none. I skipped the question.
There was something else I noticed, compared to the last time I’d done this. There was a question that’s become quite infamous, asking, plainly, if you’re a nazi. Do you have any connections to the party from 1933. This time, it was not here.
My ESTA was approved in under 60 minutes.
I then set to planning out this trip to military precision. Flying in the same day the conference begins, leaving the night as it wraps up. I would be on US soil for less than 72 hours. I love plane flights, and I’ve tackled more than enough 16 hour flights for jetlag to be an afterthought, leaving this insane plan more than achievable for myself. The only insane part was going to America.
As the date creeped closer, and closer, the US inched its way ever further towards total collapse. Every day brought a new straw to break the camel’s back. Every night brought a civilian response that could upheave my entire trip. ICE raids. Mass protests. A random Bluesky post I can no longer find made an all-caps plea to stay out of Philly.
I could have backed out at any point, and for some reason, didn’t.
In the middle of this, I find out that Diet of Worms was nominated for the NarraScope Showcase, under the Best Experimental Work category. It would involve an in-person demo, which I’d fortunately booked my flights to include, and I’m asked if I could bring my own equipment for others to play the game. I said no, on account of not having room in my bag and my flight coming too late to do so. My actual reason was, if my laptop was confiscated, they’d figure out where all my social media presence was.
The day comes, and I’m awake at 4:30am. My dad drops me off at the airport. I don’t feel like I’m actually going somewhere, at this point. I’m operating like a machine. I think I’d subconsciously decided the more I tried to not think about the fact I was going to America the better I could operate as a person.
And then my boot zipper broke.
I was there, the final leg of security, trying to tug the zip closed, and the handle ripped straight off the track. I rushed over to one of the benches, so thankful that security wasn’t busy, desperately trying to reattach it. The track was sewn fast at the end. The clasp too narrow to force it back in. No dice. There was nothing to be done without a sewing kit and a pair of scissors, and now I was in the one place in the world there was no chance of me getting either. The zip was completely broken.
I then settled for taking the laces and looping it around the boot to tie it to my leg, and hoping no-one stared at it too long.
At first, I was pissed. Really pissed. I’d already been going through a saga with these boots, trying to get a tiny, 2 centimetre length of the zip reattached to the leather, getting nothing but vague shrugs and mild terror from every single shop I went to that claimed to fix zippers. The only place that was willing quoted me nearly £200, and at that point you might as well buy a new pair.
So I thought, okay, okay, I admit defeat. You win. I’m not going to try repairing these fucking things anymore. New boots. And I was in the fortunate position of being in the one place in the world where designer boots are, theoretically, infinite.
Not a single brand in T3 Manchester or T3 Heathrow sold boots. Not one. The best I was getting was a pair of Gucci trainers that were £500 at half price.
And then I just said fuck it. You know what? This was funny. Because it was. Like, what really is going to happen with one of my boots being jacked to shit? Someone ask what the fuck is going on there?1 The zip broke in airport security in the first 5 minutes of my trip. That is, objectively, very funny.
If anything, anything, represented how ill-advised, how fragile, how utterly fucking stupid this whole thing was, it was this god damn boot.
So, I had a reward if I made it back in one piece. A new pair of knee-highs.
When I touched down in Heathrow for the connection, the flight was delayed. That pissed me off in a practical sense, because I’d been banking on making it there by early afternoon for the Showcase’s sake. Now, I’d be touching down at 4pm, and that’s if the wind was good. That gave me just under an hour to get through the airport, into Philadelphia proper, into my hotel, showered, changed, and then off to the Showcase venue. Christ.
It was many of these tiny fuck ups that kept stacking up, which, of course, put me on edge. I tried to rationalise this by thinking all the fuck ups were happening right at the beginning, leaving the rest of the trip smooth sailing. Or smooth as it could be while having to hoist up my boot every four minutes.
Still not processing what I’m doing and why, focusing on that boot as my single tether to sanity, I’m on the plane to America. We’re in the air. I guess this is happening.
For some reason, on a flight entirely through daytime, the cabin is dimmed and all the windows fade out. It’s only then I noticed that they don’t have standard shutters. Instead, the windows cycle through several UV-blocking shades, keeping the cabin entirely dark while also still letting you look outside. I marvelled at it for a while, thinking how much that’s progressed since I was a kid.
Down the aisle, I see a man wearing a red cap with a Tesla logo. As he approaches, my eyes adjusting through the lack of light, I make out that it’s actually a sports logo.
One book later, the plane lands. Then, as it lands, I realise where I am.
I’m in America.
I’m about to cross the border. In the current year. My God. What am I doing. What the fuck am I doing? I’ve fucked up. This was a mistake. I need to go home.
And the only way home is the border and back.
I make my way through the airport, and start the usual rehearsal. Where am I staying: hotel address memorised. How long: until the 22nd. Why am I here: holiday. Do not mention the con. Do not imply work. “Holiday” and not “pleasure”; still parsable to the American, exotic enough to twist in a little British charm, not so exotic they get scared. What are my plans: sightseeing; shopping. What do I do: web design. Where: freelance. Do I enjoy it? Yes. Nothing more.
Let me tell you about US border control. You might assume, this is a basic checklist. Your visa is valid, you know where you’re going and why, you have contacts available in case something goes awry. That’s why they’re asking you all these questions.
What are you, fucking stupid? Thinking that they want information from you? That something like this runs on logic and reason and basic human empathy? No, my friend. Here’s how it works.
US border control is a game, both for you and the officer on the other side of the glass. The game for them is simple: they are trying to make you say something you shouldn’t. Leading questions, probing responses, brutal social engineering guided by decades of psychological torture. All so you say something that gets you detained. There’s a quota, you see.
The game for you, obviously, is to not get arrested. You do not return pleasantries, or engage with any small talk, because this is a deliberate trap. It’s a way to make you slip up and say something you shouldn’t. I mean, they’re just being nice, right? You can just have a pleasant chat about your trip? Where you’re going? How that part actually needs different clearance? The whiter you are, the more lenient they’ll be, but they’ll take any slip ups if they can pull the rug just enough. The quota is colourblind.
If you are white, it’s much harder to get you on account of just existing. One slightly Muslim name, and they already have a motive and alibi and they’ve probably put handcuffs on you before the end of this sentence. Instead, if you’re white, all attention is put towards your visa. Work. If they can, in any capacity, get you to imply that you’re going to work while you’re here, they’ve got you. Game over. You’re turned around to a random country with your passport confiscated. Another for the quota.
And the thing is, rehearsing in the security queue, double-checking that I’ve disabled fingerprint unlocks on my phone, logged out of every account tied to “Stanley Baxton”, this is not a new paranoia driven by the current news cycle. I have done this every single time I’ve entered the US. It’s a simple checklist of what you need to do when passing through its border control. Terse responses; watertight. If probed, road-blocked answers. Do not speak until spoken to. Do not look into any cameras. Do not breathe until you cross the border.
It’s so easy to point to ongoing events, that this is all the result of a handful of people with a handful of policies pushed in a handful of months. But, this is the exact level of cruelty they always had. They detained my family for three hours because they scanned our passports in the wrong order.2 They let someone I used to know re-enter the US with five pints of alcohol because he was a White American Man. This is nothing new.
I guess, the only benefit I have now is that suddenly everyone’s hyper-aware of this system. I can say, “Well, you’ve seen what’s been happening,” as if the DHS as an institution came into existence last week. As if anyone who isn’t white hasn’t been needing to do this since 2001. As if the US hasn’t been disappearing political dissenters for as long as it’s been a functional3 state. I guess that’s nice.
First question of why I’m here. “A holiday.”
He nods. “How long are you staying here?”
“Until the 22nd. Leaving around 10pm.”
Another nod. “Where are you staying?”
I give the exact address. “I’m staying in a room.”
“An Airbnb?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t, but it’s an answer they like. A correct answer, for the game.
“Do you have any contacts in the US?”
“No.” Another lie. A contact means they can arrest two for the price of one.
“You’re not meeting anyone in the US?”
“No.”
The questions are speeding up. He realises I’m playing the game; he needs to move on to the next person for another potential score. “What are you planning on doing here?”
“Sightseeing; some restaurants.”
Eyes flick to the computer. “Any specifics?”
Oh? I think. You’re trying this? “Just that, really.”
I see his eye twitch, path blocked, before moving on to the next one. “How many US dollars are you taking with you?”
“About two hundred.” Untrue. I just have my card. [number] hundred is the correct answer, adjusted for how long you’re staying. ‘About’ concedes ground that they know better than you do about your own existence, which is always a nice bone to throw. For the game.
His eyes dart between the rest of the questions, my skin answering every one of them, exhaling sharply out his nose. Offering my passport back: “Welcome to the United States.”
Smile. Retrieve without urgency. Do not return pleasantries. Do not leave vulnerabilities open. Do not breathe until you cross the border.
It’s impossible to explain this routine to anyone not born as a United States citizen, because they will never experience this. Shooed across with a special exception of an American passport, always on the far end of the building, 20 rows, compared to the rest of the world with 5. I remember, looking at that line that divides US citizens from the rest of the world, how that line was the same one I saw 3, 6, 7, 11 years ago, and how they have no idea that it exists. They simply have no need to. They are designed to never know it exists.
I cross the border. I exhale.
Narrascope 2025
I did not make it to the showcase in time. Once I’d made it to the room, fortunately quick on account of only having a backpack and a very nice Uber driver who explained the area I was staying in, I knew I wasn’t making it. By the time I did, switched out of my travel gear into Ouji, got on the train, went the wrong way, finally made it to the Showcase venue, sweaty, red in the face, suddenly realising how thirsty I am, it was 6pm. The showcase had just ended. I rushed into the building in the vain hope that something might be left over, only to see people packing away.
The move was instead to go to a local bar hosting an afterparty by one of the sponsors, and by chance I ran into a group heading their way there. I introduced myself, gave my oh-so hilarious tale of being late, and mingled into a crowd of narrative nerds.
And then I learnt Diet of Worms had won.
I’m not sure how I feel about this trend of me winning things while being absolutely out of my mind and in the middle of travelling. I was grateful for the award, just as I was about the NMWP, but I would really like to receive one while I do not feel like I’m going insane.
I got a plaque for it two days later. I haven’t won a plaque for anything. It’s all glass and shiny and fuck me I’m actually winning awards. At prestigious events. What the fuck is that about?
That little piece of glass might have even dulled the primary reason I was here, for that damn talk. I’m hesitant to put down much about the contents of it, because I’m not sure how soon it’s going up. It feels a bit pointless to go over the whole thing when you might be able to watch it in a few weeks.
Regardless: the MO of the entire thing is to make your weird fucked up art in spite. Do not de-thorn it. Make faggot games. Read the postmortem for SEXTUPLE L. Rounding off with the fact that the collapse of Western civilisation is happening because a few people cannot stop thinking about trans people, and how that, when you thought about it for more than a second, is incredibly funny.
I should stress, this is terrifying. It is terrifying that a handful of very rich cunts are taking every measure they can to squeeze rights from less than a percentage of the population, just because they know that giving us a single inch will be the domino to the death of conservatism.
It’s also incredibly fucking funny.
And the final note of it all, making a big point of how I’d crossed the border just to prove that trans men fade into invisibility in this cross-section of societal bullshit. That people really do not like trans men talking about this, being Men when others have it so much worse, in a paradoxical position as both a threat to men and women, proving that men are not a class granted rights by God-given biological providence, proving that a woman can just “betray” her own kind to be treated as an equal in society, and only ever wheeled out as a “gotcha” whenever someone mentions toilet bans. How we have the choice of taking T, putting our heads down, and being assumed as cis men. Or, making a bit of noise about being trans, and making a lot of people very, very angry.
I had some people say they enjoyed it afterwards, so I think it went pretty well.
Also, my final observation, good lord is there a difference in comedy between the US and the UK. Doing talks in the UK I’ve had full belly laughs at rapid-fire quips I don’t fixate on or paragraphs dripping with sarcasm. In America I get a head-tilt at best.
All of NarraScope is, obviously, hanging under the shadow of me actually being present in-person, and everything was coloured by it. But the experience of the convention beyond that was pretty good. There were good talks, good chats with other people, and I’ve finally met some people in-person I thought would be forever-onlines. It’s also the first time I’ve been at a conference with food that didn’t immediately make me stand up and seek out the nearest coffee shop. I had seconds.
I also got a poster! They were handing them out to people asking questions, which I asked exactly zero, but I took it from someone who did ask one and was handing it off.
“How am I going to get this home?” I half-joked, rolling it up.
The person who gave it to me said that’s why they didn’t want it.
Eventually I found a discarded paperclip and carried it around with me, reminding me of the time I nearly left a 100 dollar BTBAM poster on the Toronto subway. It was my little trophy. Next to my, you know, actual trophy. I’ve won an award. What the fuck.
The final day comes around. I have to dip early from the postmortem for the 10pm flight, and do a quick-change in the bathrooms out of Ouji and into my flight gear: a t-shirt and jumper. The trousers stay on; they’re only black jeans, and certainly grab no more attention than those stupid boots. I head for the train, I’m in the airport, and preparing for the flight back. The border coming in, by far, is the more dangerous of the two. There’s little care about what they’re sending to other countries, and a lot of care about what’s being sent in.
Then, as I’m prepping my bag for the scanners, someone in security asks me a question. “Where’s that poster from?”
My heart skips a beat. The poster I was trying to not crush. The poster that clearly states that I was at NarraScope in bold, colourful letters.
“Oh, uh,” I fumble, “just a conference.”
At that my heart skips another beat. Just a conference. Just work. I was so caught off-guard by being spoken to in the security queue that all my DHS preparation went straight out the window.
“I think I recognise the characters,” she says, vaguely.
I feigned struggling with my boot, head down, unable to respond to the open statement. I slam them onto the tray and rush off to the scanner queue as fast as I reasonably can without arousing further suspicion.
Fortunately, I make it through the scanner without issue. My shoes, bag, and poster do as well. The poster gets shoved into my backpack, crumpled, no longer able to take the risk of someone innocently asking where it’s from. I felt so stupid, leaving such obvious bait out in the open. Why didn’t I put the colour on the inside? Why wasn’t that something I thought of? Why is it now that I lose the game, right at the end?
The flight is delayed by 5 minutes. Then 10 minutes. Then 20. Then soon delayed to the point there’s no indication how long the delay will be. I get this horrible vision, that in all this extra time someone is talking to someone else talking to someone else, figuring out just exactly where I got that poster from. Everytime a passenger is called to the desk, I flinch, swearing I hear my name.
Finally, an entire hour later, finding what little comfort I can in sitting next to a French couple openly pointing and mocking the Americans at the gate, the flight is ready. There’s an even longer delay as we’re waiting for the queue ahead of us to clear. The visions shift to being accosted in my seat. Only when we’re on the runway, the engines roaring to life, does my heart rate go down. Only after we leave American airspace do I let myself fall asleep.
Welcome Home
The flight back was more dream than reality. I melted in and out of consciousness, apparently sleeping 30 minute increments at a time according to the flight map on the seat in front of me. I’d wake up to an attendant right beside my head or my knees aching from being pinned at an awkward angle. I kept thinking I’d rested just enough to function, then pulled back by the lull of sleep, and only properly woke up once there was an hour left of the flight and the lights fully turned on.
As the final fuck-you from this stupid airline, who I have zero plans of ever booking with again, we’re delayed at the gate. A “few minutes” turns to 25.
But, finally, the seatbelt sign goes off, I yank my bag from under the seat, laser-focus on getting off this damn plane, and, finally, I was through security. I’d done it. I’m fully on UK soil again. Fuck.
My single reward at the end of this was watching a group of Americans flabbergasted that they were not allowed through the “UK/EU Citizens Only” runoff. Genuine bafflement at the concept of being secondary, of being an Other, that they spent 5 minutes hovering next to the door, as if it were some kind of ritual to activate their American exceptionalism.
One more layover later, I touched down in Manchester, overpaid for an Uber, made it home, fed our dog, overpaid for Nandos delivery, and slept for 12 hours while filled with chicken. It’s after waking up that it fully sets in what I’d done and why I’d done it. That was, just a little, stupid. Just a wee bit stupid, wasn’t it? And yet, I’d made it back in one piece.
Even now, I’m still having jolts of “I need to prep for America”, feeling the humidity on my skin, and then having a surge of relief that it’s already over, which probably isn’t a normal reaction to travelling to a foreign country.
Would I do this again? Fuck no. The collective stress of doing this already took 3 years off my life. I’ve got stupider things I need to save those years for.
And, ultimately, it’s not like me doing this made any changes in anything. The point of invisibility, means they had no idea what I even was. Is there, really, anyone even close to the top who’s shaken by a random tranny slipping through their borders?
Of course not.
And yet, it’s a little bit of defiance. And a little bit, from many people, adds up to a lot more than you’d expect.
It is true, that this ultimately did nothing. What is also true, is that my beard, my voice, and that so-coveted M that was granted in defiance of my vagina, terrifies them. And I will continue to terrify them until I can piss on their graves, immortalising their legacy as gender-neutral toilets.