Birthday(37)

sixteen





MORGAN



I hook my right arm inside my left elbow and pull. Warmth spreads through my shoulder and lower back. My body is a machine, and I’m in control. It’s hard, and fast, and it does what I tell it, when I tell it. The finger of vodka I mixed into my Gatorade doesn’t hurt.

I figured Dad would have noticed the steady dwindle of his supply of alcohol by now, but he does go through a pretty heroic amount himself. I hadn’t known that about him—or, well, I knew he drank sometimes, but I never knew how much until I started stealing it from him.

I assume he started after Mom died, which maybe explains a lot about how he’s been able to keep up appearances so well, how he’s so good at looking the other way. Turns out we both have our secrets. Boys will be boys, right?

But really, if I had a “son” who, in the span of a year, pulled his grades up to a B and went from scrawny, mopey bully-bait to a varsity running back I’d probably look the other way too, to make excuses for the sudden change and what it means. My son drinks? He’s sociable. He’s being invited to parties. He’s gotten in a coupla fights this year? Well, he was smart enough to have them off school grounds.

Dad now seems happy when he’s around me. Eric seems happy too. I’m not happy, but I’m maybe sort of less miserable. Now I only get punched when I punch first. All in all, this last year’s worked out pretty well for everybody.

Almost everybody.

The barbell sits at my feet like an insult. I stretch my other arm. Three hundred and fifty pounds of weight, total, bulges black and rough at its ends. I flex my fingers. The rest of the team has stopped working out and gravitated toward my section of the student weight room. They stand in a semicircle around me with Eric, Nate, and Chud in the middle, some muttering to each other, some chanting encouragement, some snickering. The football players think I haven’t changed, that I’m still the pussy I was a year ago. They’re wrong. I pull my shirt off and crack my neck to drive away the impulse to cover myself back up. I am in control, I tell myself. I take a breath in and the rank B.O. smell of the weight room invades my nostrils.

A year later. Another birthday. I’m sixteen, and this is who I am now—more like a man every day. I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t been hard. Not the physical training, which is actually pretty easy when you want to hurt yourself all the time, but the first few weeks, when my muscles started showing definition and my shoulders started thickening were … rough.

But then I figured out the trick to living past autogynephilia (besides drinking)—you take it a day at a time. Don’t think about the past. Don’t think about the future. Don’t look in mirrors. I’m like the guy from Memento, my life a series of disconnected gasps and flashes, no one lasting long enough to hurt for too long.

My film teacher told me he was disappointed in how my interest in film seemed to be fading. He asked if I even wanted to pursue a career in movies anymore, which hurt to hear, but then I closed my eyes, walled that moment off from every other moment, and poof, it was over. Gone forever.

A few months ago, Jasmine asked me why I was ignoring her, why I’d changed. Sometimes Jasmine will still catch my eye in the hall and look hurt or, worse, will flip her hair and turn in the opposite direction, and I’ll think about how she was the only girl I wanted to be friends with, and now I’m just another asshole high school boy to her. It’s agony, but then there’s the wall of static again. Poof. Gone.

Or, for instance, a Victoria’s Secret ad comes on while I’m hanging out with the guys and they all visibly drool and I realize I’ll always be alone in my freakish, desperate yearning to be like what I’m supposed to want, but then … you get the idea. I’m surprised more people haven’t figured out this system. Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, that’s the way to do it. Poof poof poof.

“Get on with it, Morgan,” Nate says, kicking his sneaker against the weights. “There’s only five minutes left in lunch.”

“Give him time,” Eric says. He scowls at Nate, then smiles at me, and for a moment I hate myself for noticing how he’s gotten even more handsome these last few months, how he looks more grown and rugged in a sort of jock-meets-bohemian way, but then I don’t think about that because I don’t want to. “Go easy. No point doing this if you get hurt and can’t play tonight.”

“It’s not like we need him,” a senior named Billy-Joe says, under his breath, but I still hear him.

“You need somebody to beat your ass,” I snap. I take in a sharp breath, squat over the weight, and arch my back. I keep talking without even looking at Billy-Joe. “Maybe you’ll finally get a date once your face is rearranged.”

“Hot damn,” Nate says.

“Big talk when we all know you’d be on the bench if your daddy wasn’t coach.” That’s Chud.

I spit on the mat between us and flex my fingers on the barbell. He’s too big to take in a fight—two fights so far this season, three over the summer, and one last spring have taught me my limits.

“Go fuck yourself, Chud,” I say.

This isn’t me, of course. This is just my suit of armor. All I can do is prove myself, now and tonight. If I lift this weight? That’s 275 pounds added to my deadlift in less than a year. That’s a body honed through work, which that sack of meatloaf never had to do. If I contribute to a win tonight? That’s our second win against the Pioneers in three years after a fifteen-year losing streak, and there’s no coincidence it’s me on the team that’s made the difference.