Social Security Office

Chicago, IL

"So, are you really going to do this?” Jessica asks after I get out of bed.

 

“Yeah, it doesn’t seem weird to me at all.”

“That’s why I love you!” she says and kisses me.

I throw some clothes on, put my Social Security card and birth certificate inside my wallet and leave the apartment.

Jess had already added my name to hers when we were married and I was off to do the same: to have the U.S. Government officially add my wife’s last name of Bair to my last name Flannery, and henceforth be recognized as Sean Bair-Flannery.

The Chicago Social Security Office is next to one the greatest bars in the world—The Green Mill Cocktail Lounge—which, to me, is a further sign that the United States Government also wants me to take my wife’s name. I go into the Green Mill, have some beers, then leave for the Social Security Office expecting to have a new name in less than an hour. When Jess changed her name at the same location, she said it was faster than getting a new license plate. “Hell,” I think, “maybe I will even return to the Green Mill once I’m done and make a big show of opening a second tab under a new legal name?”

Once at the Social Security Office, I receive a number from a security guard. He is sitting behind a podium that is covered in paper signs. These signs were clearly made by him on the office’s inkjet printer, and most of them are warning you not to use your cell phone.

I find a seat in the waiting area and start chewing a piece of gum; I don’t want my breath to smell of beer.

Jess and I were married in Columbus, Ohio—her hometown—and when we went to the courthouse (in Ohio) for our marriage certificate, the clerks made us raise our right hands, then asked us their first question: “Do you swear you are not cousins and you are not presently drunk?”

After you swear you are neither inebriated nor cousins, the clerk congratulates you and moves on to the rest of the questions. In other words: Ohio gets so many marriage requests from people that are wasted or related that they hold off on the congratulations until they verify that detail.

So, I’m chewing gum, hoping Chicago isn’t so concerned about booze in these matters when the quietness of the lobby is shattered with screams of:

“NO FOOD! SIR! SIR! NO FOOD! NO FOOD IN HERE, SIR!”

I look around and realize the security guard is screaming at me. While yelling, he is pointing down to his handmade signs; buried near the bottom this totem pole of cell phone warnings is a single warning about no food: a sign with a chicken leg and a line crossed through it.

“NO FOOD!” he keeps yelling.

“It’s gum,” I counter.

“GUM COUNTS!” he hollers back. “I JUST AIN’T GOT NO ROOM FOR A GUM SIGN!”

I nod my head to signal I understand. My number is called. I walk to the guard, place my gum in the garbage for him to see. He nods approvingly and I walk to the counter that has called me.

“What can I help you with today?” asks the clerk.

“Hi, I was just married a few weeks ago and I’d like to add my wife’s name to my own name.”

“You wanna do what?” The lady behind the counter reacts with a mixture of wonderment but also visible apprehension that she cannot help.

“I have the marriage license and my driver’s license,” I tell her, “isn’t that all you need?”

“Not for a man,” she replies.

(This was fifteen years ago, before Illinois supported gay marriage and at a time when many government documents and processes were dated in their sexism. A female friend of mine bought a condominium earlier that same year and her title in the mortgage documents was “spinster.” I had to look that word up; it means, “An old unmarried woman beyond the usual age of marriage.” She was thirty-five.)

Another clerk joins the conversation, adding, “For women, yes, they come in with a marriage license and ID and we give them a new name; because they do it so often we have to make the process easy, but for a man...It’s like a court case: you have to see a judge, take out an ad in the newspaper announcing the change, give people time to object to the name change. It’s a whole process.”

“What about men who marry into rich families,” I ask, “like when a guy marries a Rockefeller or a Hearst? They always add that name.”

“Sir, look outside”

I do so. There is a man, with a peg leg, throwing up into a garbage can. One of his hands is gripping the garbage can for support. The other hand is raised high in the air, holding aloft a forty-ounce bottle of St. Ides— almost like an Olympic torch—in order to protect it from being sullied by his own vomit.

“This is the Lawrence Avenue Social Security Office,” she continues, “we don’t get too many ‘Rockefellers’ up here.”

“I see.”

“Wait!” my original clerk pipes up. She has an idea: “The State of Illinois does allow you to change your name on a ‘sex change.’ We could use that.”

She turns to me, and warming to the idea, explains, “What we do is: we turn you into a woman! Got it? Fill out that paperwork; turn you into a woman and, when we do, you get to pick a woman’s name. Then, we submit that, OK? So you are, legally, a woman for a minute or two in Illinois. Then we change you back to a man! And when we change you back to a man, you add your wife’s name!”

There is a pause. I make sure I understand the plan:

“So, I’m gonna be a woman for a few minutes?”

“Just in the state of Illinois!” the other clerk adds.

“And only on paper!” says the first.

“OK, so I will be a woman for a few minutes. Then you are going to turn me back into a man and I can add my wife’s name?”

“Yes, that’s right,” the first clerk responds.

As I repeat the plan, she, for the first time, seems to grasp the gravity and peculiarity of it.

“So...I mean,” she attempts, “I think that’s the only way we can do it, Is...is that what you want to do?”

“Ma’am,” I respond confidently, “that’s exactly how I want to solve this problem.”

There is a bit of cheer from the clerks helping me and they begin assembling documents. At this point, a bald man rises from behind cabinet files, and inquires sternly, “What is going on over there?”

He had clearly worked at the Social Security Office long enough to know people are not supposed to cheer here; the U.S. government does not suggest solutions that taxpayers enjoy hearing.

“He wants to add his wife’s name to his own,” my clerk responds. “We are going to change him into a woman.”

“On paper!” the other clerk assures.

“Then change him back to a man,” my clerk adds, “and add his wife’s name when he turns back to a man.” The middle-aged man has reached the counter while they explain the process. He looks at the array of forms and quietly shakes his head “NO” back and forth for what seemed like five straight minutes.

“I got an easier way,” he finally adds, “we can use the female form. We will just say he’s opted not to specify his gender.”

“You can do that?” the clerks ask.

“Yeah, I’ll add a 10-56 supervisor’s endorsement form too. It will work, and we don’t have to change him to a woman.” “What if I want to be a woman?” I ask, “ya know... for a few minutes.”

At this point, the particularity of the solution has won me over and I begin to entertain the idea of being a woman for a few minutes. For example, the next time I see my buddies at some dive bar and they ask, “Do you think that joke would offend women?” I could answer, “As someone who was a woman for a few minutes, yes, I can assure you that it will.”

The bald man exhales unamused, again shaking his head “NO” while speedily signing boxes within a triplicate form.

“Listen,” he asks, as he annoyedly passes the form to me, “do you want to have your wife’s name or not?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Sign that, write the new name down and show her”—he motions to the clerk—“your documents.”

He walks away. I sign everything and show the marriage certificate and driver’s license. The clerks are happy to certify the new name though, according to Jessica, I rendered it incorrectly. I am, legally: “Sean Bair-Flannery.” Jessica tells me that one’s “maiden” name is supposed to be first and that by rights I should be “Sean Flannery-Bair,” but I don’t think that flows as well as “Sean Bair-Flannery.” And therein lies the advantage to being the only man I know to take his wife’s name: I can tell her with unshakable certainty (as men are wont to refute all points), “Actually babe, that’s how women are supposed to do a married name. Not men. It’s different for men.”

The bald man mentions, as he is walking away, that I will get a new Social Security card within a few weeks.
 

I never received that card. Several times, I have had issues where my name was rejected on filings because they claimed my name on the form doesn’t match what the Social Security Office has for me. That bald guy changed something, but I haven’t quite figured out what exactly.

Jessica believes I was drunker than I realized and misspelled some part of my name and don’t have any real idea what I’m currently called. But I know better. I spent enough time almost being a woman on paper to recognize a blowhard when I see him. That bald guy had no idea what he was doing! He probably turned me into a corporation or something with my wife’s name. For all I know, those forms were for a hunting license.

My wife is a bit embarrassed that, as a matter of pure detail, she can’t say that her husband knows his own name. But I learned an important lesson: always question the easy-to-explain solutions of a confident man. Is he really helping you? Does he really understand the problem? Or is he just trying to move along the line with the smallest paperwork?

I find myself reasserting all of this to Jess one morning, a few weeks after the whole situation occurred. “Mmm-hmmm,” Jess mutters, pretending to agree while she opens the mail.

“You don’t believe that confident men can be a problem?” I challenge.

“Ha! Well I married one, so I’m well aware of their faults, for example”—she raises one the envelopes from the mail (I realize, upon closer inspection, that it’s our bank statement)—“they might drink [here her voice changes noticeably] sixty dollars worth of beer at the Green Mill before going to a government office to change their name!”

“Your point?”

“I don’t think the office manager was the problem. I think by that point you probably couldn’t spell ‘Sean’ correctly.”

“I’ve been awfully drunk in my life, but never enough to misspell ‘Sean’.” I pause and think about it for a second, then add, “My middle name—Michael—does get tricky.”

“What?” she asks, laughing.

“Well, as I think more about it, I might have put my own middle name as ‘Michelle.’”

“What?”

“I do remember thinking ‘Michael is trickier than it should be.’ I wonder if I wrote Michelle?”

“Hahah!” Jess laughs, walking away, adding “I guess that just makes you twice the feminist, Sean Michelle Bair-Flannery.”