For all of Eric’s efforts at subtlety, the café was crowded, and two other diners soon noticed the nail polish.
“Oh my god,” one of the men said, pointing at Eric, a transgender woman who now goes by the name of Rachael Jones.
“Blatantly, without any regard to my feelings, they were talking about the fact that I’m a freak,” Jones said, remembering that day from at least a decade ago. “It wasn’t okay. I certainly didn’t want any trouble, but I couldn’t let it go.”
After debating whether or not to leave, Eric stood up and walked over to the table, politely asking the men how he might get to the Greenwich Village.
“When I did that, I became a human instead of an object,” Jones said. “My comment to them wasn’t ‘Hey guys, that’s not okay,’ or anything like that. It was simple, and I want to believe that the next time they saw somebody different, they saw them as a person too.”
***
For as long as she can remember, Jones has known she was not like most people. Growing up in Brown County with a conservative Christian family, she didn’t know the words for her feelings.
“I thought it was just me and I just needed to try harder not to be this way,” she said while sitting at a table in her Bloomington restaurant, Rachael’s Café. “It wasn’t until I got older that I realized, God, this is a real thing.”
Growing up, she loved to play sports and roughhouse. She remembers lifting weights at the YMCA and envying the women in the aerobics room.
“I felt both wanting to be feminine and wanting to be masculine,” she said. “Barbie and Ken all rolled up in one.”
As Eric, Jones worked for a company which sold printing toner. At one point, Eric led the region in new customers. He sold to the mayor and people from the army, but he wasn’t being true to himself.
When Jones’ nephew committed suicide, something in her mindset changed. She was in her mid-thirties at the time.
“I realized how thin the veil is,” she said, referring to the line between life and death. “I guess it became more difficult to suppress who I am once I realized how fleeting life was.”
She began dressing as Rachael more and more often. Knowing she would be fired for presenting herself as a woman, she quit her job. She’s a very social person, but she knew she couldn’t find a job where she could be Rachael and work with people. She decided to make one for herself. She mortgaged her house and bought the café.
“I’m completely presentable, but I’m certainly not passable, so wherever I go I’m odd,” she said. “There are a lot of people like me and there are a lot of people who appear odd in all kinds of different ways that have nothing to do with gender. So I wanted to create a place where people would feel safe and comfortable to be who they are, because I think integration leads to commonality. People realize that we’re all just people.”
Today, Rachael wears dark lipstick and a purple tank top. Her curly blond ringlets tumble out of her hair clip as she peels oranges for her famous orange chocolate cookies.
Though Jones has always been a good cook, when the café opened eight years ago she had no restaurant experience at all. The transition into her life as Rachael and her career as a restaurant owner was a rough one.
“I’ve had people come in and stand at the top of the stairs and look at me and say no and left,” she said. “I’ve had people come in and just be downright rude.”
She’s also had customers who stayed, even after Jones could see the surprise register on their faces. They ordered food or a drink, lingered to chat and sometimes came back. It’s these interactions she says she treasures.
When she has normal conversations with customers who may have preexisting biases or maybe have never seen a transgender person before, they realize she’s a person. And a nice one, at that.
***
During the years of running the café, Jones has seen a change in Bloomington and a change in herself.
“I certainly personally have evolved incredibly,” she said. “I used to be afraid to go to the store or be afraid to be dressed. Not afraid for myself physically, but emotionally. I always felt better when I could come in here because, in my mind, this was a safe place.”
She said she has seen customers experience the same confidence boost with the help of the café. They would come into the restaurant timid about who they were, use the environment as a sort of cocoon and, in time, gain the courage they needed. Victoria Laudeman, the café’s manager, said Rachael plays a big part in making customers feel safe.
“She’s more than just Rachael, the transgender person who opened a café — it’s beyond that,” Laudeman said. “You just feel at home right away. You can stay all day and hangout and make friends and feel comfortable. She fills a niche that is desperately needed in the community.”
Even with the devoted customer base the café has acquired, at the end of this week Rachael will no longer be filling that niche for Bloomington. After a party Saturday night, Rachael’s will close forever. A Chinese restaurant will take its place.
Jones does not know what the next step will be, but she is happy for the memories the café has given her. She remembers coming in early, before sunrise, eating peanut butter, drinking coffee and envisioning the day ahead. She remembers when she served President Obama’s Bloomington campaign team during his first presidential election and Obama called to thank her.
Even though she will miss the café, she said she isn’t afraid of the future.
“The greatest lesson I have ever learned, and it was hard coming to, was never say ‘poor me,’” Jones said. “Because when you do, you invest in it. You believe in it, and it clouds every aspect of your life. ‘If only I wasn’t this way, poor me.’ I am this way. ‘Poor me’ has no place.”
