Hey, Community Transit. Happy Pride Month.

I know. Cute, right? Pride Month. Rainbows. Inclusion. Belonging. Everyone gets to be seen. Everyone gets to exist. Love is love, unless your gay son becomes inconvenient for the narrative, in which case apparently love is paperwork, HR forwarding chains, sheriff involvement, and a courtroom pretending none of this had anything to do with anyone's workplace.

Adorable.

One thing pisses me off. Actually, let's not be cute. A lot of things piss me off. But one thing in particular has been sitting in my chest like a brick.

The commissioner opened her ruling by saying this had "no bearing, no bearing on anyone's workplace or anything going on outside of this family."

No bearing.

Which is fascinating. Because my mother was the first person to drag it into her workplace.

Before I even knew.

I didn't walk into Community Transit and announce myself. I didn't show up with a megaphone. I didn't stand outside the building with a sign that said, "Hello, I am the gay son, please involve your entire agency."

I emailed HR because I was worried about my mother. The same HR department that had handled my own health insurance. I said I was concerned she might be under coercive control. I asked for confidentiality, which, when presented to the commissioner, was completely stripped.

Love that.

That was what did it. A son worried about his mom. A gay son, if we want to keep things seasonal.

Little did I know, my emails were already being redirected from my mother to Mike Berman in IT and Security. Internal communications were already happening. Public employees were already making decisions. The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office was apparently waiting to arrest me at a board meeting I didn't even know existed.

And then I got to sit in court and listen to someone tell me this had "no bearing" on anyone's workplace.

Girl. Be so serious.

If this had no bearing on anyone's workplace, why was the workplace already in it?

If this was just a private family matter, why were HR, IT, security, public records, administrators, and law enforcement all somehow wandering around inside the private family matter like lost little bureaucrats?

What a coincidence. What a magical, accidental, entirely-not-workplace-related coincidence.

And I know some of you know exactly who I am. Or you think you do. You know the curated version. The forwarded version. The version where I am unstable, difficult, obsessive, too much, too loud, too angry, too emotional, too inconvenient. The version that lets everyone skip the harder question:

What if he was telling the truth?

What if the gay son emailing HR wasn't the threat? What if the concern was the concern? What if treating him like the problem was the easiest way to avoid dealing with what he was actually saying?

Uncomfortable. I know.

Let's go down the list.

Veralee Estes. You wrote, and I am quoting you directly, that I had made no direct threats toward the petitioner, only threats toward myself.

No direct threats toward the petitioner.

Only threats toward myself.

And your response was to involve law enforcement in Snohomish County?

You went all out to validate De's delusions. You have a Maya Angelou quote in your email signature while apparently deciding that a possible mental health concern should be handled by sending armed strangers to a meeting 1,100 miles north.

Inspirational. Truly.

What was the plan here? Were you helping? Were you protecting? Were you just moving the problem out of your inbox and into a police report?

Because from where I'm sitting, it looks less like care and more like bureaucratic ass-covering with a wellness sticker slapped on top.

Mike Berman. You took my email to HR. The email asking for confidentiality. You stripped out the confidentiality request. You added your agency headers. You sent it up the chain.

I don't know what they call that at Community Transit. Process? Procedure? Oopsie-doodle document laundering?

Because where I come from, when someone asks for confidentiality and you remove the part where they asked for confidentiality before circulating the email, that is not exactly screaming integrity.

Do you have kids, Mike? Imagine someone doing that to them. Imagine someone taking their actual words, shaving off the part that matters, dressing it up in official formatting, and then letting other people make decisions based on the altered version.

Cute system you've got there. Very public agency of you.

Rachel Woods. Public records officer. The person whose job is transparency.

And yet somehow there are communications about being "smart with the searches" so you don't include all of Deanna's emails.

Your words. Not mine.

"Smart with the searches."

That's one way to put it. Another way would be: the public records officer appears to be discussing how not to produce public records.

But sure. Maybe transparency means something different when the records are embarrassing. Maybe the public only gets the records that don't make the agency look like it got caught with its pants down in the breakroom.

And then there's the larger cast of characters. The people who forwarded. The people who read. The people who nodded. The people who said nothing. The people who decided the easiest thing to do was turn me into the problem.

I know you exist. I know how agencies work. Nobody knows anything until everyone knows everything. Nobody made a decision until somehow the decision made itself. Nobody is responsible, but somehow the machine always moves.

Love that for you.

Here's the part that makes all of this especially disgusting during Pride Month.

My mother still has a gay son.

That did not stop being true because I became inconvenient for the narrative. It did not stop being true because I asked questions people did not want to answer. It did not stop being true because Community Transit found the easier version of events and ran with it. It did not stop being true because a commissioner sat there and said this had no bearing on anyone's workplace after the workplace had already been in the story before I even knew the story had started.

I spent years listening to my mother's grief about estrangement in our family. I defended her. I believed her. I reassured people.

I never imagined I would end up in the exact same empty chair. I never imagined I would watch my own mother participate in erasing me and then realize the institution around her was more than willing to help.

And yes, I said erasing. Because that's what happens when a son becomes a threat because he expressed concern. That's what happens when a request for confidentiality becomes a forwarded agency artifact. That's what happens when the story becomes more important than the person. That's what happens when the gay son is still alive, still here, still speaking, and everyone acts like the safest thing to do is pretend he is just the problem.

So Happy Pride Month, Community Transit. Post the rainbow. Say the words. Do the little inclusion routine.

But don't pretend this isn't part of your story too.

My mother still has a gay son.

Still here.

Still gay.

Still her son.

Still the inconvenient little bitch who kept the receipts.

-H