Birthday(33)

“Okay,” I say, then Susan and Connor lead me into the house.

Everything happens in a daze. Suddenly I’m on a chair in Connor’s bathroom, my shirt off, a towel around my neck. Susan rubs my shoulders and whispers encouragement. I squeeze my eyes shut, too afraid to see my reflection, and then, with a metallic snip, my head feels at least a pound lighter. Susan places something soft and silky in my hands. I look down to see my hair shining under the bathroom light. I swallow, take a deep breath, and realize I feel pretty okay with it. At least it’ll help some kid.

“Wanna see how it looks before we shave the rest?” Connor says. I squeeze my eyes shut again and shake my head, my cheeks burning.

“You’re being really brave,” Susan says. She slips her hand into mine and kisses my cheek. “I would be sobbing right now.”

“Thanks,” I say. We both flinch and then laugh as Connor produces a huge electric trimmer and turns it on, its industrial buzz rattling the small space. A few terrible minutes later he turns it off again, whips the towel off my shoulders, and hands me a mirror. I take a deep breath and hold it up, and I’m glad I’m sitting down because a feeling of light-headedness hits me when I realize I don’t recognize the person looking back at me. I run my fingers over my pale scalp, taking in the odd bumps and lumps I never noticed before, and to my horror I realize I’m about to cry, but then Susan takes my face in her hands and kisses me—my first real, true kiss since Morgan—and I forget everything else.

“You look so much better,” she says.





MORGAN



I let my bike fall to the ground when I reach the dumpster. The Kmart bag strikes asphalt and bursts, spilling makeup across the dark pavement. Swearing under my breath, I turn on my phone flashlight and slowly pick up the pieces, one by one, until both my hands are full. I stand there for a moment, in the reeking lot behind the Shell station near our trailer, staring into the dumpster’s black maw and listening to night frogs, and I consider not doing this.

It felt good to see that face in the mirror, covered in makeup, if just for a moment, if only the one time. Amazing, actually. I recognized her and she felt like me. She was me.

But how good would it feel if I put on makeup like that every day? And how bad would it feel if Dad couldn’t look at me anymore?

Like an idiot, I had allowed myself to fantasize about living in a place like New York or Atlanta or Los Angeles, where both my parents were still alive and so sensitive that I didn’t even need to tell them. I let myself imagine alternate presents and impossible futures where I could be with someone like Eric as more than a friend. I let myself pretend I lived in a universe where my body was completely different than the one I currently exist in.

But, no.

“Wanting” to be a girl? It’s stupid. It’s stupid and insane.

I live in Thebes, Tennessee. And no one here is down with that “queer shit.” I’m trapped in the life I have, and I need to shut down any other fantasy before it hurts me even more. I want to make movies. I want a new bike. I want to not be sick in the head.

I whip the makeup up over the dumpster and into the darkness. My throat starts to close. I hear something shatter and I close my eyes.

This way that I feel, this … obsession, it’s not a thing that I want and it’s not a thing that I am, it’s something I have. Like a disease. Mom had cancer. I have autogynephilia—I saw that word online. Lots of people hate that idea and say it’s transphobic, that it makes it a disease, but this feels like a disease.

I remember the exact moment I realized Mom was sick, the moment I could hear her crying even out in the waiting room. I was young, but you never forget a moment like that, even if you don’t know exactly what’s happening. I learned a new word. “Cancer.”

And now I have word for myself. Autogynephile. It’s like I have a genetic disease I was born with, like how mom’s cells were programmed to kill her. Conversion therapy doesn’t work. I read that. There’s no way to feel better, except living your life like a woman, which is the one thing I can’t bear to do. Maybe I can’t stand the possibility of losing Dad’s or Eric’s respect. Maybe I don’t want to be reduced to a sex object and it kind of seems, from the outside, like that’s all the world would let me be. I feel, with total clarity, that this is going to kill me.

I scream at the top of my lungs, feeling lost and like I don’t know where to turn. Where do I go from here? I bend at the waist and buckle my knees. If this were an anime or an action movie, my rage would whip around me like wind, and mournful music would rise up. But my life is neither of those things. This is just a night in the life of a small, lonely, sick kid who wants, more than anything else, to go to sleep and not wake up again.

I hurl the last of the makeup into the dumpster with a crash.

“Kid!”

I’m crouching now, punching the asphalt. My scream has petered out into a rasping croak. A wad of trash hits my side, forcing me to look up, my eyesight blurry.

“Hey, kid! What the hell?”

I see the gas station attendant standing at the outermost edge of the awning lights, looking at me like I’m a crazy person, which I guess I am. I sniffle and run my forearm across my nose.

“You okay? What happened?”

“Nothing,” I say. It sounds like I’m getting over a cold.