Editor’s note: This story is the first in a series about Trenton Johnson, a transgender man living in Dallas who navigated the political landscape in response to the state's "bathroom bill."

The full three part series can be read here.

AUSTIN — Trenton Johnson checked his wave and mustache in the mirror. Like most guys, he worries about losing his hair. And like most guys, he has nothing to worry about. There's no sign of a receding hairline, and his taper fade is neat and sharp. Still, he jokes someday he’ll need a bottle of that canned hair that promises to “spray the bald away.”

He made sure his shirt was pressed. The button-down’s long sleeves obscured the name “Rayne” tattooed on his arm — the goddaughter he helped raise who calls him “Daddy,” even though she’s not of his body.

Peering into his reflection, he liked what he saw. One thing was missing — the dog tag necklace his fiancé made for him that has a picture of his grandmother. He needed his Nana, the “tough cookie” who raised him through those cold New York winters, to be with him that day.

Trenton Johnson is not a silent man, but he’s never been very political, either. Now, for the first time in his life, he planned to sit in front of the men and women elected to represent him and tell his story.

“I am here as a human, a black man, a son, a father and a minister,” he jotted down for Tuesday's Senate committee meeting. He’d have only two minutes to testify at the debate, and he wanted his words to change minds. “Because of all these things, I believe it is inhumane, a form of segregation, mentally and emotionally abusive and flat-out against the love of Christ to pass this bill.”

"I am also a trans man and I will forever use the men's room."

1 / 4Trenton Johnson has a tattoo reading, "I am what I am." (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News) 2 / 4Trenton Johnson poses for a photograph at The Dallas Morning News photo studio in Dallas on Thursday, March 9, 2017. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News) 3 / 4"Family First" is another of Trenton Johnson's tattoos. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News) 4 / 4One of Trenton Johnson's arms features a tattoo of his goddaughter's name Ray, short for Rayne. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News)

Senate Bill 6, the so-called bathroom bill, would keep transgender guys like Trenton from using the men's room in places like his nieces' schools and the Capitol building he'd set foot in later that day. It would also nix city laws that protect his right to do so.

Supporters of the bill say it’s not meant to target people who are transgender, people who identify as a different gender than what they were assigned at birth. Its requirement that people use the restroom that matches the “biological sex” on their birth certificate is for safety purposes, they say, to ensure it’s illegal for men with bad intentions to even enter a ladies’ room with the intent to do harm.

Assaulting someone, no matter where you are, is already illegal, opponents say. Plus, police organizations question whether it will improve public safety. It's a solution looking for a problem, they think.

For Trenton, it would also throw him and all other transgender people in the same pot as criminals, he wanted to tell the lawmakers, and it would worsen the overt discrimination his community already faces. It does target them, he insists, even if it’s not meant to.

The bathroom bill scares him, and he doesn’t scare easily. But Trenton Johnson is not a silent man.

'It was in me'

1 / 2Trenton Johnson is not a silent man and now he is sharing his story. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News) 2 / 2Trenton Johnson, who was recently named Mr. Black Trans Dallas, poses for a photograph in Deep Ellum in Dallas on Friday, March 2, 2017. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News)

To Trenton, life is a blessing and the human body is a gift from the almighty, a vessel he says is “fearfully and wonderfully made” in God’s image, quoting Psalms.

So when he decided to transition from the female body in which he was born to the male body he wanted, he asked for God’s help.

“It was like God saying, ‘I’ve given you life and I’ve given you the body,’” Trenton said he realized after prayer and meditation. “How I choose to present myself and wrap this gift for the rest of the world is up to me.”

"Nobody is able to give you a blessing then tell you how to use that blessing."

Trenton, 34, is “TJ” to his friends and his fiancé, Bridget, whom he’ll marry in October. He’s a minister at his church in Oak Lawn, where he’s the only trans man. He used to be an assembly worker, but now he sells life insurance and writes.

He didn’t grow up knowing the word “transgender.” Back in Buffalo in the ’80s, Trenton remembers hearing about drag queens and female impersonators. But he’s never been feminine.

He knew he liked women from an early age, but “lesbian” referred to a sexual preference, not gender identity. His struggle to understand why he felt masculine impeded him at times from exploring his sexuality. He shrank from physical contact, giving but refusing to receive, feeling more and more disconnected from his body.

Then a few years ago, he came to Texas.

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“Being masculine was not something I was taught. That was innate. It was in me,” he says. “It wasn’t until, and I can be honest about this, until I came here that I found the right therapist.”

He says the resources for transgender people he’s found by living in Dallas have saved him. He’s setting aside money for surgery and continuing hormone therapy. He’s changed his name on his license and Social Security card; fixing the gender on those documents comes next.

His New York birth certificate still says “female.” That’ll get changed before he gets married, he says, but it’s something his mom refuses to accept. Nana called him her son, her boy. Mom won’t, shattering Trenton’s hopes that his move here a few years ago would salvage their relationship.

“My mother and I do not speak; she is an absent part of my life,” Trenton says. “She does not accept my transition and never has.”

The last time they talked was when Trenton was crowned Mr. Black Trans Dallas, an accolade not widely known outside of his world, but one that makes him the voice for his community across Texas. He competes for the national title, to become Mr. Black Trans International, in April.

His mom didn’t approve. The day Trenton was crowned, she told him she wouldn’t be coming to his wedding. So he told her off. He doesn’t like to quit, even on those who’ve given up on him. But he says he’s learned to live without his mother’s affection.

“It hasn’t been easy. I can’t say that,” Trenton admits. “But I probably make it look a lot easier that it is.”

Trenton Johnson, who was recently named Mr. Black Trans Dallas. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News)

Confident is too feeble a word to describe Trenton. He doesn’t get nervous, he says — never saw occasion to be. Talkative is too plain a term to refer to the rapid fire of his speech. He preaches, speaks in stanzas, as though his first language was poetry. He creates a sense of ease around him, that he'll talk about anything, a "love thy neighbor" vibe that's hard to shake. His laugh is frequent, sometimes unexpected, a raspy chuckle that rattles the puny microphone on his phone.

And he uses the men’s restroom, a practice that would be illegal in government buildings and public schools if the bathroom bill becomes law.

Thanks to the body God gave him, and the testosterone he’s been taking for years, he “passes” easily as just another guy in the next bathroom stall. He could remain silent about being trans, but he isn’t “stealth” about it — never saw occasion to be.

“I don’t experience people questioning whether I’m male or female,” he says. He’s tall enough, and at 263 pounds, with tattoos and a face that can look gentle one minute, hard the next, he doesn't worry about his safety as much as others do.

"But I'm fearful for my other sisters, because there's a monster on the loose."

On Feb. 25, his friend Chyna was gunned down in New Orleans, shot 10 times on her way to pick up a dress for a Mardi Gras party. The police say she wasn't targeted for being transgender, but Trenton knows the statistics. It can be harder for transgender women; many don't pass as easily. They become targets for violence at the hands of unaccepting family members and angry boyfriends, strangers and johns.

He was thinking about Chyna when he decided to testify at the Capitol. How “if her soul could speak, it would tell you how badly she just wanted to be free to walk out being fearfully and wonderfully made." The rest of the words of the poem he wrote for her rattled around inside his head.

Trenton wanted to speak for himself as a black trans man — a minority within a minority community — and for his slain sisters and brothers. The Republican-dominated committee that would debate the bathroom bill didn’t worry him. He’d been through worse, plus he doesn’t like to quit, even on those who’ve given up on him.

He got there at 7:15 a.m. Tuesday, just after the doors opened, and signed up for his two minutes of time.

'It was like a setup'

Trenton Johnson waits in the line to sign up to give a testimony, as members of the Senate State Affairs Committee debate and hear public testimony of Senate Bill 6, the transgender bathroom bill, at the Texas State Capitol in Austin on Tuesday, March 7, 2017. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News)

Trenton rewrote his testimony four or five times that day, wondering how many more hours he’d have to wait. Maybe he’d be called before dinner, so he’d have time to drive home to Bridget. He made sure he could stay another night with his friends in Austin, just in case.

Republicans on the committee debating the bill had invited a dozen people to speak in favor of it first. They spent a few hours questioning them, then broke for a couple of hours to convene the full Senate. It was mid-afternoon before the committee started taking public testimony.

About seven hours after he arrived, the public began being called up to speak. Trenton was in group 15 of 30-something, he thought.

"At that point, you could hear the chatter in the rooms, 'Oh yeah, we're going to be there all night,' " he said. "It was like a setup. It's like they wanted us to get so frustrated that we'd get up and leave."

Most of the speakers the committee had invited to testify bothered him.

A few came from out of state. One, a lesbian discharged from the Army in the '70s for being gay, denied the existence of transgender people. Then she urged the committee not to “give into the trans mafia.”

A black pastor from San Antonio said thinking sex and gender are different was just “foolishness.” He joked he has “former homosexuals and lesbians” in his congregation, but “I have never seen a former black person."

"Maybe Michael Jackson."

Some people in the room laughed. Others cringed.

A school administrator said he didn’t want a child born male using the bathroom with little girls. Then an 8-year-old girl spoke, saying she’d it'd be "scary" to be in the restroom with a boy.

Another 8-year-old, a transgender girl in a purple shirt and choker, watched on a TV in a nearby room. Trenton and dozens of other transgender men, women and children did, too.

Trenton Johnson waits to give a testimony in the overflow room as members of the Senate State Affairs Committee debate and hear public testimony of Senate Bill 6. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News)

How were these people authorities on this subject? Trenton thought, watching them question his existence, his faith, his humanity.

“I wish they would've invited me. I'm an expert,” Trenton said. “I live this every day.”

Trenton did agree with them on one thing — he doesn’t want his goddaughter, Rayne, to worry about boys in the girls’ room either.

“I do not want a man in the restroom with my little girl either, OK? The reality is, I agree with that part,” Trenton said. “But I believe that if a person is a trans man, he is a man. I don’t look at him as if he is a female, because he is not.”

The public testimony was completely different, dominated by transgender people, their friends and family. Lawmakers heard from Trenton's community in a way that was unprecedented in Texas history.

Trenton wanted to speak, to add his voice. But he'd have to wait; he was just one of 271 people who signed up to speak against the bill. The cafeteria closed, and the vending machine didn’t take credit cards. People got hungry and grew weary. But no one wanted to leave, worried their name would be called and they’d miss their chance to talk.

By 10 p.m., Trenton’s resolve began to falter. The drive back to Dallas looked impossible. He sat in his car alone and watched live video of the debate on his phone. Finally, he went back to his friends’ house and kept watching, waiting for his group could be called so he could hop back in the car.

Then he fell asleep.

His name was called 40 minutes later, at 12:31 a.m. He had missed his chance to speak.

"The mental, emotional drain, it just overtook me."

Trenton Johnson watches a live feed of members of the Senate State Affairs Committee listening to public testimony of Senate Bill 6. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News)

Trenton Johnson is not a silent man. He doesn’t like to quit, even on those who’ve given up on him. He wishes he’d had the chance to speak and beats himself up a little for falling asleep. But only a little.

Almost 1,600 people showed up at the Capitol to oppose the bathroom bill, including pastors, parents and politicians. Fewer than 250 people signed up to support the bill, including the 12 invited to speak by the committee.

But the bill passed easily. The vote — 8-1 — shook Trenton. He was angry, but not anymore.

“At first, I was mad. ‘Damn. I didn’t get to say anything!’ Then, I was like, ‘Well, I guess it wouldn’t have changed anything anyway,’ ” he said later that day. “They already made a decision. They were just letting us talk so we couldn’t say they didn’t give us a chance to speak.”

"There's no need of us getting mad. They already made up their minds."

The full Senate will debate the bill this week. Trenton hasn’t decided whether he’ll drive back down to Austin to watch in person. He’s still recovering “mentally, emotionally and physically” from the committee hearing, he says, and now he’s busy planning a vigil for a transgender man from Dallas who committed suicide.

“I'll see what that looks like as the day gets closer,” Trenton said. “If not, my plan is to live my life, be an advocate and activist.

"And continue to use the men's room."