December 27, 2014

  Ross

  It feels like aire life since school started, in August, and even the holidays pass as if I’m walking on coals. If I think back at all, I only remember the never ending gloomy days, that I used to like but now feel like torture, spent thinking so much, all the time, without being able to do anything. The o of talking around me every single day, and I ’t even really remember eople talk about all the time. I look at the i a into poems and try to write some, but I don’t show anyone because I ’t imagine anyone would ever really like what I have to say. Sometimes I imagine being asked about what I’m thinking, but it never happens. Silently fantasizing about being asked what I think as if I were someone whose feelings matter. Being someone whose feelings matter. But it never happens, and I feel bad about it, because people, Dad, mainly, I guess, have this stant saying that you don’t matter, no one cares about your personal feelings or your opinion or the way you view the world. I stantly feel like I should be doing something , but I also stantly see myself in my own mind’s eye, weakly crossing my arms, trying to cover up my stomach. That’s where all the feelings sit.

  Something came over me right after I got back to school. On the first day of English, in third period, Mr. Price calmly introduced himself and said “Right now, you all have one-hundreds. It’s my job to take that away from you”, I looked around, and didn’t know anyone, and then the main, maybe only, thing I was good at was in jeopardy now. Sihen, each day in the freezing cold, half-lit room, which feels like it’s trying to evoke some sort of stuffy study, feels equally anxious. One day, he assigns a half-page writing assig about embarrassing pasts, and walks around. And after giving everyone long enough to make signifit progress, he says, with indignance, “I see no one’s writing in cursive”, even though no one has been taught how.

  Everywhere I go, I start to feel like I’m surrounded by thick, cottony, fog. Endlessly ral and overcast, with my limbs slightly heavy, so I stop g. I start zoning out. School is no longer a source of validation, it simply lies in the way of staring at the puter and listening to music.

  Eventually, Mr. Price, frustrated with me, calls Mom, faking niess that he doesn’t dispy to the students, telling her I’m smart, though he clearly thinks I’m a fug moron. She’s heard the stories as they’ve unfolded, and she decides to help me py his game. We stay up te, and she teaches me to study, running through vocabury words and plot points of the assigned readings. She reads over any essay question answers I’ve written and makes sure they’re good, and I start to feel alright again. Things briefly look up.

  It doesn’t st lohan a week. I overhear her and Dad arguing. Dad campaigs that I’m a boy and shouldn’t be babied and should have to learn the hard way to study by myself, and that they shouldn’t let me listen to that “music about guys g.” Mom tered with her belief that people should actually be able to express themselves, especially while they’re thirteen, and that she is an English professor and her knowledge is helpful. Dad says men were supposed to keep all their feelings inside, before aowledging that he never had feelings at all. It gradually built into a questioning of my personality: “I mean, why does he care so much about english anyway?”

  And then I stopped listening, because it weighs in my chest. Instead, I did what I always do: I went bay room and listeo more music about guys g. It es up whenever Dad gets involved in anything— the problem is always me not being the thing that I should have been. Anything I deal with, when he hears about it, the question always ends up being “Why does he have to be this way”, and after a while, I start to ask myself the same question.

  On the bus home, I bee friends with Lauren, a transpnt from New York. We talk about musid the i and give each other bands to check out. Eventually she introduces me to some of her other friends, but I don’t quite fit in. They’re all girls, and I get some looks from them at first, before they realize I’m not crushing on them or about to yank on their pigtails or whatever stuff guys still do. I see guys start to perform this weirdly aggressive personality, and it starts to i even the ones who don’t py sports— Patrick, a kid in my sed period math and third period english css, at one lunch, keeps going “I just want to debate somebody”, like a guy in a TV show who goes to a bar, not yet drunk, but already eager to get into a fight. They start tormenting girls — some of which I’m friends with— whehey’re trying to flirt, and I shrink in my chair, not wanting to bee like them. It yanks me out of the moment, and I feel my shoulders.

  It’s on the bus ride when I’m oscilting, as usual, between idly zoning out, watg raindrops on the window collect before they bee too big and then fly off the gss, and writing wildly ies on my phohat I have the thought again, that es and goes, but has been bubbling up a lot tely.

  I wish I were a girl.

  I wish I could be like Lauren. I wish I could wear the sorts of clothes that she does, and have everything happen so effortlessly, like it does for her, but I’m not “allowed” to. I really have no idea what I’m allowed to do or be, I only feel that I’m not allowed to do or be things that I want to do or be, within invisible walls made entirely of emotion. Like there’s some programming in my head. Exit this boundary of what guys should be or do, feel shame.

  All of this keeps ing bae at slow moments, and as life slows down and the passing of time feels more like a bed of nails, slow moments are stant.

  Each day of Christmas break, I wake up at around 8 AM, and stare at the puter, trying to burn time, until roughly 4 AM, when I go to sleep. I ’t stay asleep for lohan a few hours, and before long, find myself living in a perma state of being too tired to be rationalize my way into te, and too awake to sleep. At night, I don’t have to overhear anything through the walls, and I finally think a little bit, though still eternally drowsy. Sometimes, I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth or take a shower, and I see myself in the mirror, and I bee grossed out and hollow. I never feel like I pletely be myself unless everyone is out of the house, whiever happens, or they’re asleep. The days drag on, and Dad has to wake me up on Christmas Day, because Sylvan and Casey are up, and they want to opes. I wish I were a girl.

  The holiday es and goes, and everyone has fun, barely notig that I’m there with my ition recessed. Even Mom is distracted by all of the excitement and people begging for her attention.

  It’s two days after Christmas when I break. The days of drowsiness pile up, and as if I’m ing down with the flu, my skin and bones and limbs feel like they weigh a thousand pounds, and I’m ay core. The thought keeps entering my head, whehere’s a free moment. I wish I were a girl.

  I close the game I’m pying to burime, having run out of attention for it, and run a search for something really stupid. Really childlike. And this isn’t even how you search for stuff, not really.

  “i want to be a girl”

  “wish i were born a girl”

  “feel like i should’ve been a girl”

  “how do people get sex ges”

  Search results pop in front of me. A forum fender people.

  I read the Frequently Asked Questions thread, about how it works, and that there aren’t really signs. Then I read a thread, two threads down, about “signs” when you were younger.

  One girl mentions that she loved Sailor Moon as a kid. Shit.

  Another mentions that she was always kind of effeminate and fot about wishing she were a girl until she transitioned.

  Another says “idk i just wao be a girl so i took pills”

  Another says “i was always a girl. it just took the world time to realize.”

  Those two pet into an argument about the nature of being a transgender woman, and I realize that it doesn’t matter where you are, The Discourse Lives.

  I spend all night reading. Distorted, feedback ridden guitars keep me pany as I read about transitioning. Hormones, bottom surgery, facial feminization, the possibility of eventually being stealth— transitioning, moving far away, no one ever knowing I had been born a boy. Maybe it’s possible. Never having to talk to Dad again.

  On an i forum fender people, a fifteen year old girl posts, saying that she just figured herself out, and she’s trans, and her parents are really gay friendly, and what could she do?

  I read posts about puberty blockers, and hormones. How if she starts early enough, she would be pretty mudistinguishable from a… nender woman. Cisgender, apparently.

  Fuck. I’m almost literally sitting on a time-bomb. I’m still pre-pubest, but that could ge at any sed. Oh my god.

  I read ahread asking about the girls’ names, and how they picked them out. Rachel is what Rachel’s name would’ve been if she had been born a girl, Ann is Ann’s mom’s middle name, Lilith is in love with the myth, Alice was high up on an alphabetical list of baby names and she liked it. Kate liked how it was a cute name short, and the long version, Katherine, sounded sophisticated.

  I cycle through girl names I know, and I remember a versation I had with Mom when I was a kid. I told her I didn’t like my name, and I wao ge it. I had a name oip of my tongue, and I don’t even remember where it came from, how I knew about it. Chloe. I wao tell her to call me Chloe. But I was timid, shook the thoughts out of my head, and told her “I only think of girl names”, before looking at the floor and walking away.

  Chloe.

  Chloe, Chloe, Chloe. The name engraves itself o’s on in France, like Mom’s name, Camille. I want to be like her— smart, and cultured, and mature.

  I wonder how she would react to all of this. It’s ly a fug mystery how Dad would feel about it— apparently The Bck Parade is too effeminate for him— but Mom…

  I stare at the puter more, pying games, listening to specifigs o, trying to leave it all behind. I snap out of it. It seems like a lot of the girls on the forums are kind of shut-ins, and mostly just sit inside being sad. I try to squash it down.

  Eventually, I see the yellow light from my mp sort of merge with the blue light from the distantly rising sun.

  As if jolted awake, I turhing off, having vinced myself that I’m a guy and it’s fihat I don’t o be a girl, that I’m not a girl and don’t want to be. I quietly sneak out of my room, and into the bathroom across the hall, to brush my teeth before slipping into bed.

  In the process of getting ready to go to sleep, I stare at my face for too long, terrified of it being mase. The more I imagi, the more I imagine myself being a man, Imagining it mase. Looking at my body’s outline uhe loose, bck sweater and imagining it big and manly.

  The general dread that I’ve felt for months, that welled up in me every time Dad questioned why I cared so much about english or so called flowery little books, the way I would leave my body whehe guys expected me to act like them, and were surprised I wasn’t just friends with girls to get a date. It all feels like it has a cause now.

  I wish I were a girl. I have to transition.

  I crawl into bed, feeling different.

  I’m Chloe.

  June 18, 2016

  Camille

  Ross has settled in nicely over the st two weeks, though it’s obvious he thinks it’s a weirder fit than it actually is. We run errands where he tio be afraid to impose, and we occasionally talk, as he finishes books. I try to show him it’s okay to e out, but he doesn’t seem to notice me regard him.

  It’s a rainy day, but Ae and I made pns to meet up, after ten years of not seeing each other. She came to see me once, in Raleigh, but didn’t like David, and drifted away. Of course, now, her assessment doesn’t seem so incorrect.

  We tried to get together a couple of times, but once I got fully moved back to Boston, her mom died, and I had to go to Raleigh for Thanksgiving. That was when Ross told everyone, in Ross’s Romantixious way, that he wao move in with me. I spent the rest of the year and some of the winter asking him questions, trying to move out abruptly into a pce with two bedrooms, and trying to get David to stop protesting him wanting to move.

  All of that, and plus, I wao meet Ross. He was all of four years old whe met him, and plus: what I found in one of his boxes. I have to talk about it to someone. And she’s the only person I trust about things like this. Not that I have a ton of options. I certainly don’t trust David.

  There’s a knock at the door, and it’s Ae, smiling, in a light raincoat. We greet each other, I grab a bottle of wine for the gloomy Saturday afternoon, a down in the living room. She gains a shit eating grin, in only the way a best friend , and as I finish p wine gsses, opens her mouth.

  “So, you’ve escaped the trenches of phet.” There it is.

  “Apparently.”

  “I’m proud of you! It’s about time.”

  “Is it phet if you knew you were gay before you got married?”

  “Not sure what you’re talking about. You and Eva were clearly just very good friends.”

  “ht. Silly me!”

  I call Ross, before he walks outside to go to the bookstore, and

  “Ross! Do you remember Ae?”

  “Not really, but I’ve heard stories!” he says, trying to be chipper and not ft and analytical like he usually is.

  “I’m honored!” she sells some over the top sweetness, then turns to me and feigns deep seriousness. “What does he know?” she says, affeg ftness.

  “I know about the Hole cert.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “Sorry!”

  We ugh a bit, and she waves at him.

  “Sit down! Camille’s told me so much.”

  “Like what?”

  “You guys are close, you like to read, you listen to a lot of music.”

  He pauses for a minute, aive to himself, affects a quizzical void says “Literally none of that is true.” He points at me. “I’ve never met this woman before in my entire life.” He’s naturally caught on to Ae’s overly expressive sense of humor, and it’s incredibly cute to see him outside of his own head for once. She ughs, and turns to me.

  “See this is what you gotta do, you make a joke in respoo a joke. Ross gets it. Two seds as it!” He smiles and gracefully bows, and she ughs again.

  She’s here for a few minutes and it’s like the past ten years didn’t happeernally in college, but in the best way.

  “Please do not indoate my fourteen year old into The Cult of Encing Ae.”

  “But how else will I get supporters?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  We talk for an hour as she quizzes Ross on books and music, how he’s liking Boston, his hobbies and favorite books, his writing, aurns the questions. He asks what she does, she tells him she’s a painter and art teacher, which you probably could guess just by looking at her, and he’s early curious. They get along well. He fits in effortlessly, and I see him leaving his head. tent to ily spend time with these two women in their mid-30’s.

  The subject eventually drifts to Ae’s life and things that no teenager is ied in: things Ae wants to do to her house, what the art on the wall is, how wife is, and he eventually just sort of drifts out of the room, back to his.

  Eventually the versation dies own, and it’s time to talk to her about it. The box.

  “So I did want to talk to you about something, because you’re the only person I trust about this stuff, and you were right about me and David being a bad idea.”

  “What exactly?”

  “I think Ross might be a girl. Er, transgender.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is that all you have?”

  “Well, it’s not surprising? I meaories you told me over the years made it clear he was kind of… feminine. Not that it’s bad! But stuff you mentioned all this time, and then, like, looking at him. The sed he started talking about books, it was obvious how he looks up to you. Liza has this friend Miles, and he went the other way— but I’ve talked to him about it. He k about the same age. Ross… seems the type? I guess? I mean looking at him, he’s clearly not a normal fourteen year old boy. Like, he was holding bae envy when I was talking about Liza and I doing married people stuff.”

  He had. It was only after that, whearted talking about water hoses and what she wao do with the mantle in her living room this fall that he got up a.

  “What should I do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He doesn’t know that I know.”

  “Really? How’d you find out?”

  “I ening boxes. A bunch of them got here while we were out shopping for furniture, and he utting stuff together and I just… thought I’d help by opening the boxes.”

  “Jeez, what do you even do?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I know, sorry, I’m just… Isn’t that kind of how…”

  “My mom found out about me? Yeah. I’m not feeling great about that either.”

  There’s a long pause, she ges her demeanor slightly, and then asks another question.

  “How do you feel about it?”

  I’ve thought about for over a week straight, since I found the box. Watg Ross very carefully, the way he’s talked about books. What he’s chosen to read. Maybe I’m a bad mother for feeling this way, but…

  “I really want it to be true.”

  “Yeah?” She looks pleasantly surprised.

  “I’ve always wanted a daughter. And like… I always felt closer to Ross. I love Sylvan and Casey, too, obviously, but they just… always chose David. Sihe sed they were born. It felt like Ross was mine. And he might be my daughter. But I don’t know what to do. He’s kind of quiet— he might not ever tell me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, he grew up in the house with David. Even growing his hair out was a big deal. Aalked about how David and the kids spoke about me and women in general after I moved out, and I just… he might be too beaten down. I’ve been trying to think of how I show him that it’s okay, but I ’t think of anything.”

  “Have you tried broag the subject or anything?”

  “Yeah, for the past couple of weeks… he hasn’t really said much.”

  We think for a little bit.

  “Hey… have you tried opening up to him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what it sounds like, you never really came out to him, not formally. How much does he even know about that part of your life? Sit him down, tell him how and when you knew you were gay, and maybe he’ll tell you he’s transgender.”

  I think it over and imagi. It’s so simple, but it makes sehe way he expresses himself. The way you tell him something happeo you, and his way of reting is telling you something simir that happeo him. And he already made the first move, weeks ago, ihe quiet statement that he had been reading The Bell Jar, the books. This is how he unicates.

  “That’s… a really good idea actually.”

  “Well, you know me. I’m full of them.”

  “Full of something.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Wine. You’re full of wine.”

  We ugh, and then talk for another hour or two. It’s hard to tain my excitement. We keep ing back to the subject. Hatg a pn to put Ross in the right situation to have this talk and to draw him out of the closet. I’m going to have a daughter.