Transpotting

I sat and I waited in the empty car park. It was dark, all of the streetlights were dead, bar one. I shouldn’t be doing this, I thought, but I want to know what it feels like. I need to know how it feels. I checked my watch; they should have been here by now. Then, in the distance, two headlights appeared. They crawled down the street and entered the car park. They looped around, probably checking that we were alone, before pulling up opposite my car. I rolled down my window, and they did the same.

“You lookin’ for some Fobe?” The man asked me.

I just nodded and handed over a wad of cash. He counted it before throwing the vial over to me.

“Enjoy. Tell your friends,” and with that, his electric window slid back up, and he was off.

I passed the vial of clear liquid over my fingers a few times, before I started my car up and headed towards the hotel I’d booked for this. I told my family I was going out of town on a business trip. I shouldn’t be doing this.

It all started at the office a week earlier. I worked in logistics. You know, I figured out how to get things places. Supply chains, that sort of thing. It’s dull but important work. We were all gathered in the office kitchen for April’s Birthday. There was the usual small talk. Mike mentioned how his little girl had just joined a soccer team.

“Got to be careful. Nowadays with all this trans stuff, they’re letting boys play on girls' teams. Who knows who she could be up against?” I said, laughing a bit afterwards.

Nobody else laughed, “That’s a bit mean, Gary.”

“They’re just trans weirdos, who cares?”

There was an awkward silence for a bit before Jane changed the subject, and everyone moved on. I didn’t think much of it at the time, just thought I worked with a bunch of humourless jerks. But then the next day, my supervisor called me into her office.

“Gary. Some of the staff have raised issues with some insensitive statements you said at the morning tea the other day.”

I sighed, “That was just a joke.”

“Susan’s daughter is trans.”

“Well, I didn’t know that.”

“You’re also the only person in our section who doesn’t have their pronouns in their email.”

“I don’t need it, I’m obviously a man.”

My supervisor looked at me awkwardly, “It’s just, we’re trying to build an inclusive environment here.”

“Fine,” I said through my teeth, “I’m sorry for the jokes and I’ll try to be more inclusive,” I hated saying that word.

When did the world change? When did people forget that trannies are weirdos? Now people sit here and lecture me. Tell me I need to be more inclusive. All this diversity shit. 

That was how I ended up alone in that hotel room. Alone but for the vial of Fobe.

Originally it had been called Liquid Transphobia, later shortened to its street name Fobe. First synthesised from mould scraped from the walls of J.K. Rowling's house, it is a unique drug. Its primary effect is to induce an abnormal hatred of transgender people. Scientists are still not sure exactly how it does this from a biological standpoint. Some theorise that it might act on the brain in a similar manner to how rabies makes people afraid of water. If hydrophobia can be biologically induced, then why not transphobia? 

Upon acting on this irrational hatred, the user receives a flood of endorphins. Typically, this is achieved by posting rants on X or other social media sites. It quickly spread and became the drug of choice for most people looking for a quick, cheap high. Governments took too long to crack down on it, and then never cracked down on it very hard. The right lobbied hard to try to keep it in circulation.

However, an affordable, easily accessible high is not what I am interested in. One of the other effects of Fobe was ultra arrogance. Otherwise known as the unshakeable feeling that you are correct about everything you believe. No more doubting myself based on what some smarmy young coworker says to me. Knowing that I was right about trans people, that the world has gone crazy, and I’m the last sane person. 

I put the vial into the electronic vaporiser. For some reason, these were still legal to buy, despite Fobe being the only real reason you would use one. I hit the button. There was a whirring sound, then a burst of steam emerged. I let it envelope my face. Let it seep in. Through my eyes, my nose, even my ears. I felt it instantly. Felt the hate course through my veins. Felt the anger rising up inside me. Felt all my muscles tensing up. Followed by an urge to let it all out. I grabbed my laptop, logged into X, and started typing. I let my thoughts flow out, wrote dozens of near-incoherent tweets. Some were just strings of swears and slurs for trans people. It felt sooo good to let it all out. This must be the endorphins. I commented on other people's posts complaining about trans people. I posted articles from far-right websites about trans people. Comments and likes on my posts swiftly followed. Probably other Fobics getting their own high, like a digital opium den. 

I woke up in the morning, passed out on my laptop. I looked down at a half-formed tweet comparing trans people to pedophiles and groaned. I felt horrible lying to my family about where I had been. They kept asking questions about my business trip, and I kept having to lie my way out of it. I swore to myself that I’d never touch Fobe again. It turned me into something terrible. It was hard to stay on the wagon. Every day, I’d remember that feeling. Feeling right about everything. But I stayed away, I held off. That was until my supervisor “suggested” that I do an online training course on diversity and inclusion. 

“So you’re ordering me to take this course?”

“No,” my supervisor said, “It’s just a suggestion. I just thought it might be a good idea, considering the recent incident.”

“So I don’t have to do it?”

“Well, no,” she cleared her throat, “But it is your performance review coming up and I’d hate for that incident the other day to cast a shadow over your review.”

So I did as I had been told and sat through the online course. Listened to these pretentious assholes tell me about pronouns and dead names. Telling me the scientific facts I’d learned in high school biology were wrong. Telling me that I was wrong about the world. I couldn’t take it. I went on another “business trip”. Told my family I had received a promotion and I would be going on many more such trips. I needed the trips. To be immersed in that online echo chamber with all the other Fobics. All of us reminding each other that we were the sane ones. That I was right.

I tried to resist. Sometimes I could go a few weeks without a hit. But then I’d get slighted at work, or my wife would say some backhanded comment about me to take me down a notch, and I’d be back on the stuff.

Eventually, one day, my wife was waiting for me when I got home from a Fobe binge.

“How was the business trip?” she asked, coldly.

“Oh yeah, good,” I said, trying to hurry past her.

“Where was it again?”

“Sydney,’ I said quickly.

“You said Melbourne the other day.”

“Oh,” I thought on my feet, “Oh yeah, it was there. They had to change venue last minute.”

“To a whole different state?”

“Yeah,” I shrugged my shoulder, ”I don’t understand either.”

She sighed, “You’ve been using Fobe, haven’t you?”

“What? No, of course not,” I stammered.

“Then why have you been posting all these anti-trans tweets?” she said, bringing my timeline up on her phone. 

Shit, I thought. In my Fobe-induced haze, I’d forgotten to switch to my alt account, “I didn’t post those,” I lied, “My account must have been hacked.”

She must have been able to hear the desperation in my voice, “How long have you been lying about these ‘business trips’? How long have you been on Fobe?”

 “Look, I just use it to help me deal with things?”

“What things?”

“Just, just,” as I tried to explain, I felt something well up inside me. Oh no, I thought, there must still be some Fobe in my system, “Just dealing with those filthy trannies, how they're ruining society.”

My wife looked shocked at me, “Oh my god! How can you say such things?”

The conversation deteriorated from there. I promised to stop taking Fobe, but going cold turkey was hard. I deactivated all my X accounts, tried to stay out of that world. But Fobe has spread into the mainstream press. Almost everyday there was a Fobic publishing an opinion piece full of hate for trans people. I couldn’t escape it. I started using again. Skipping work to go on a Fobe binge. It was inevitable I’d get sloppy. My wife found a vial in my clothes when doing the laundry one day. She took our daughter and left.

After my wife and kid left, there was nothing stopping me from taking more and more Fobe. Most evenings, I took in a cloud of Fobe and spent all night on my computer, letting my venom pour over the world. The Fobe helped me channel what should have been my guilt into anger and rage. It wasn’t my fault they left, it was the trans people! They infected my family with the woke mind virus and turned them against me! This must be what happened, because I was right about everything, the Fobe told me that.

There was barely a moment I didn’t have Fobe in my system. It started affecting my job. At lunch and morning teas I’d rant to my colleagues about trans people. Tell them how violent they are, how using someones prefered pronouns is basically supporting rape. 

Eventually I was called into my supervisors office, yet again.

“Gary, we need to talk about these opinions of yours.”

“I’m not allowed to have my own opinions now?” I said, barely holding back my fury.

“You are, in your personal life. But, take for example, this inventory report you sent my. It’s starts of normally enough, cateloging what items this company has in stock, then it suddenly turns into a tirade about how transgender ideology is brainwashing children.”

I was in such a drug induced faze most of the time that I often lost concentration and drifted into such things, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“No it won’t. Unfortunately I have to let you go. We just can’t have someone like you associated with our company, I’m afraid.”

With no job, it gave me even more time to take Fobe and rage on the internet. I made a small bit of money from my anti trans Substack. Though over time, as I took higher and higher doses, the quality of my writing declined, as did my subscriber count. With me spending what little income I had on more Fobe. Eventually, I was evicted. 

Living on the street, I was still able to scrounge some Fobe. I still had my phone and was able to continue tweeting from free wifi. So long as I had both of those things, I could still have that glorious feeling of knowing I was right. My wife, my old coworkers, everyone: they were all wrong, and I was right. 

I made a small camp in an alleyway out of some old boxes I’d managed to scrounge form a recycling bin. I sat in it and vapourised a vial of Fobe. “I was right,” I mutter as I lay down on my cardboard and let the Fobe take me, “I was right.”