Drinkin' With The Mates

It was a wrong thing to do
In a bar, like joking about high noon
In a Western town. But it was true
And I had to speak, I had to say
"No way." I had to say: "Hey."
I said: "I don't care about the game.
We're none of us just the same.
I come here to drink and for company
And conversation that I never see.
We never talk about anything,
We never mention important things."
And everyone laughed, said it was game night
And asked, kind and cold, if I was all right.

I should have seen the signs. Dear Lord I should have seen.
I know that men can be mean. I know. I know.
But I said: "What about when we were young?
Before we were boys, long before we were men?
Were you a girl too, way back then?
Would you want to be one again?"
The silence fell like wound in the noise
The shocked look of men who had only been boys.
A few were startled, almost remembering when -
But they'd put too much work, O too much into being men.

I asked them if they missed the little things
All those small and simple things
Like being able to cry. When's the last time you cried?
I asked, and I swear something in me died.
Because none of them understood, or would admit if they could.
And they asked me just where I thought I stood.
And I wondered if being a man meant
Being a coward in the end. I swear I began
To say something, but my mouth said something else.
It said: "A round for everyone, on the house."
And I dropped two fifties on the bartop
And the bartender leaned in to talk.

"You're money ain't no good here," he said, so soft and lonely
Was his voice, that for a moment I could see
The time he'd played with his sister, making dolls
Until his father found him out and the fall.
And he turned away then, handed me the money
But made sure that no one else would ever see.

I almost didn't go back the next night
Filled with a kind of numbing fright
But my wife would ask me: "Why not?"
And I've never asked if she was a boy, never thought
To wonder, and maybe feared an answer.
I almost lied then, to her, but then I said to her
I'd had a fight with the guys, you know how it is
Even if she didn't, she pretended this.

So I came back anyway, slinking my way inside.
But no one joked or mentioned it, and I sighed
And life went on, but sometimes when taking a piss
There's tears and conversations that I miss
From when I was a girl all those years ago
But I guess almost no one really knows
What it was like, to be me, and sometimes even
I can barely see just who I used to be.