Moved by the inspiring quote, I turned around to find Dr. Hunter standing right in front of me. “Are you buying the book?” she inquired, to which I replied: “Sure, but I will get it a little bit later.”
Dr. Hunter looked me dead in the eye and said, “So you are not buying the book?”
“I will, but I wanted to ask you a couple of questions first about the work that you do.” I perceived an immediate shift in her attitude the moment I said I wasn’t going to buy the book on the spot.
“Why are you asking me this, do you wanna date me?” – which she didn’t say in a funny way; it felt like I had asked someone a question that I had no business asking.
“No… I just wanted to find out a bit more about your work,” I proceeded cautiously.
She made a frustrated puffing sound, simultaneously flipping up her hair and pointing both of her upper extremities to the poster behind me: “Well, go to my website and you can read what you need to know there.”
“I prefer to hear it directly from the source…,” I continued, even though I could feel the ground was getting shaky.
“Well then, you should have already known what this event was about before coming here, this event is for me!” she said, starting to lose her cool.
I made a mental check that she emphasized that the event was for her and not for her non-profit, but I went on: “Well, I am writing an article about this, so I thought…”
“I don’t give a fuck what you do! This event is about raising money! I don’t have time to explain! Black trans women are dying! We don’t have time to explain shit!” – she went berzerk.
I started shaking. This was so unexpected and the exchange was making me feel uneasy and unwelcome, all at once.