My Sister

by Selenis Leyva

  When I finally got the courage to come out to the world as gay, I was hesitant. Something about it just didn’t fit right. Everyone else around me, though, like Kimberly and my sister, seemed sure. Though it is true that I am and always have been attracted to men, none of us knew the differences between sexual orientation and gender identity. It is different for everyone, but in general, sexual orientation refers to who you are romantically, sexually, emotionally, or spiritually attracted to. Gender identity, on the other hand, refers to your individual concept of self. Gender identity can mean that you identify yourself as male, as female, as neither, or even as both. The spectrums for sexual orientation and gender identity are infinite, and one person may inhabit multiple identities or orientations throughout their life.

  For me, though, I have always identified as female. This was true even when I was a child, when I did not have the language to describe it, and when, later, I had the language but not the courage to live out openly in the world as my true self. Now, because I know the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, I understand why the label “gay” never quite felt right to me: I was never a male attracted to other males. I am, and always have been, female. The first moment I heard the term “transgender,” I grasped it. It was liberating to finally have a way to describe how I’d always felt and to join a community of others like me. Today, I am proud to say that I am trans, but I have also become aware of how labels can confine us and affect others’ perceptions of who we are. I am a trans woman, yes. But I am also a complex human being who deserves respect, privacy, and compassion. I am a trans woman, yes. And that does not make my sense of self or my womanhood any less legitimate or real.

  All that time I spent alone in my room dressing up in Seli’s clothes or putting on makeup or daydreaming about what it would be like to be loved by a boy—those were the moments when I could really just be myself, when I could forget about how other people thought of me (as a boy) simply because of how my body looked when I was born. I thought that my feelings were something shameful, that I would always have to hide. I thought that I could only be my true self alone, behind closed doors.

  That night in the attic, when my sister asked me if I wanted to be a woman, my immediate reaction was to say no. I was scared and confused. I didn’t want to be thought of as a freak. And I didn’t want my family to be ashamed of me.

  At the same time, though, that night was the first time I was given permission to even consider separating my sexuality from my gender identity. And it was exciting.

  Marizol Leyva

  Chapter 9

  MARIZOL

  I never went back to Staten Island after that day with Jayden. We talked on the phone a little bit, and kept somewhat in touch, but I think we both realized that we weren’t for each other. It’s funny to look back on it now: the two of us were so similar. Extra feminine, both wanting to be with someone more masculine. A couple of years later, I found out that we were even more similar than I could have imagined: we both had embarked on the long, uncertain journey of transitioning.

  Still, the experience of going to Staten Island, the mix-up with the police, and the confrontation with my family all made me feel that I could be more open. I knew that I had Seli supporting me, and I became more comfortable putting myself out there. On Myspace, I’d see posters about parties or Kiki Balls, those legendary ballroom-style competitions that combine fashion, performance, and dance, at LGBTQ+ youth centers in the city. Around the time I turned seventeen, in 2007, I started meeting other young people in the community who were just beginning to discover themselves, like me, and we stayed in touch through chat groups and AOL Instant Messenger.

  There was this one girl I met on Myspace—Miranda was her name. There was just something about her I found so interesting. For one thing, her fashion was killer. She was small-framed with long brown hair, very well put together, and she had this confidence that just came through. I didn’t normally go out of my way to become someone’s friend, but I saw that we knew some of the same people, so I sent her a message.

  Hey girl! I think we have some mutual friends in common. I just wanna let you know that I really like your style and I hope we can meet up one day!!!

  To my surprise, she wrote me back right away.

  OMG THANK YOU!!!!!! YOURE SO CUTE TOO!!!! YES LETS MEET!

  I was smiling mad cheesy. I was so excited that someone like her wanted to be my friend. Soon, we made plans to meet up with a group of others in the Village at this Chinese food place on Christopher Street. I remember feeling, when I got out of the train at West 4th, like I was in a whole new world. Growing up in New York City, I’d always known that the Village was important to the LGBTQ+ community, that it was the site of the Stonewall Riots and essentially the birthplace of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the United States. But it wasn’t until I went there for the first time that I understood what it meant to have a public space feel like home. To this day, getting out at the West 4th station is magical for me. There’s something about the energy of the Village that makes you leave all your problems behind. There, I always feel confident and at ease. And that first day, I finally felt free to be myself. Knowing that this was a place where people fought for our rights was liberating, but so was seeing others like me being so free with their body language and dress. Here, no one gave any fucks about what anyone else thought, and when I was there, I felt free to turn it up as much as I wanted. To be whoever I wanted to be.

  Like the Stonewall Inn, or the Christopher Street Piers, Golden Woks became a legendary place for the young LGBTQ+ community in New York. It’s a place where people go and hang out, pick up some cheap food, and spend time kiking with friends who have become family. Everyone I met seemed to know about the hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant just a few blocks from the piers. It’s tiny, with only four small tables and a few chairs. It’s mostly a take-out place, but whenever we were there, it was always packed. Always a commotion.

  That first day I was there, when I met Miranda, we were all crowded around the little tables with our trays of sweet and sour pork and egg rolls that came in a wax-paper bag. Everyone was talking about their sexuality and how they identified, but I was finding it hard to concentrate. The volume of the chatting was super loud, and I got caught up in everything that was happening. I couldn’t believe that I was there, with other kids who were like me, and that Miranda was sitting just a few feet away.

  Then I heard the reactions.

  “What? No way?!”

  “Girl, I’da never thought.”

  “Really?!”

  I looked over at Miranda’s table, and everyone’s face was in shock. I had to know what this was all about.

  “What’s going on, y’all?”

  “Miranda just said she’s transgender!”

  This was the first time I’d ever heard that word, and I had no idea what it meant.

  “Wait—what do you mean? What is that?”

  “I’m trans,” she said.

  I still didn’t get it, and so she broke it down in the only way she knew I would understand, though I could tell it made her uncomfortable.

  “I used to be a boy,” she said quietly. “But I never felt like a boy.”

  “Oh my God!” I said. “No way!”

  But in my mind, I was thinking: I can’t believe it! That’s how I’ve always felt too.

  My brain started spinning, just trying to put things together. I didn’t ask her more right then, but that night, when I got home, I started googling every question that came to mind. I learned about what it meant to “transition,” or the process of making changes in your life so that your gender expression more fully matches your gender identity. I learned, too, that transitioning can mean many different things, and the decision to transition is very personal and individualized. As a result, one trans person’s experience can vary drastically from another’s.

  And I learned other things. In general, there are two types of transitions: social and med
ical. Social transition refers to decisions such as coming out to friends and family and asking others to use pronouns that match your gender identity. It can include changing your name and adopting new grooming or clothing habits. Medical transitioning refers to physical changes you make to your body, usually under the guidance and care of a medical professional. This can involve surgery but also less-invasive medical procedures, such as laser hair removal and hormone therapy. That night, I read about what hormone therapy meant for trans women, how a steady dose of estrogen and testosterone blockers could make your hips rounder, your face softer, your breasts fuller.

  I couldn’t believe it was real. For so many years, I had imagined an alternate life in which I could live as a girl, and now I knew that I wasn’t only dreaming but that it was possible. And I knew someone who’d done it! I didn’t know the full details of Miranda’s transition at the time, but I saw her living her truth out in the world, her gender expression matching her gender identity.

  And if Miranda could transition, why couldn’t I? Right away, I felt excited and hopeful—transitioning was something I knew then that I wanted to do. But some of the details scared me. I read about trans men and women being rejected in their communities, trans youth being disowned by their families and becoming homeless. I read about trans girls getting their hormones on the street, with sex work the only way to pay. I read about hormones damaging your liver and bones, about sudden blood clots that could kill you.

  I wondered: Is this sacrifice worth it if I’ll finally look how I feel?

  I COULDN’T help but feel like the universe led me to Miranda. I knew there was something special about her when I first saw her Myspace profile, but I didn’t know what. After that first day we met in the Village, we became fast friends. She’d spend the night at my house or me at her place. She showed me how she’d make her own clothes, how she’d add studs or bows or rhinestones to jeans and tops, how she’d deconstruct a shirt and put it back together so that it’d hang in a fresh way. She was a few years older than me, and I felt like from her I had so much to learn, but we also had so much in common—growing up, we both felt different from everyone else, like we had to keep everything a secret. She was the first person in my life who I could really talk to, and it was a relief knowing that I wasn’t alone.

  At the same time, even though I was excited and hopeful to see someone like Miranda fully out there, a part of me was intimidated. It had been a struggle for her at first, but by the time I met her, she didn’t have to hide around her family. I wanted to believe that my family would come around, too. But what if I had to choose between them and living my life to its fullest? I was too afraid to confront the possibility.

  And then, one day, I received a message from an old friend, a friend who was in a stage of transitioning that was less intimidating to me: Justin, from middle school. Just like people around me had assumed I was gay because of my personality and the way I carried myself, I had made the same assumption about Justin because of how flamboyant he was. But I quickly saw that he had a second profile. In it, Justin was going by the name Melissa and posting pictures in full makeup, in dresses and wigs.

  Melissa and I never had the conversation about her identifying as trans, but after meeting Miranda, it was obvious to me. At the time, Melissa would go out in the world as herself. Her parents were not fully accepting of this new identity, so she had to experiment with makeup and clothes behind the closed door of her bedroom. Eventually, her mother came around, realizing that it wasn’t just a phase. But her father didn’t like it, and even though Melissa was clear with him that she didn’t give a damn what he thought, whenever she came home, she toned it down, taking off her wig or changing into more gender-neutral clothes.

  I decided to cut school and meet up with her. She showed me her collection of makeup and wigs, how she’d take photos of herself with her webcam. We hit up the shops along Jerome Avenue. Rainbow, Foot Locker, the accessories store next to the nail salon. It was there that I found my wig: long and dark brown with a straight bang. London Girl, it was called. It made me feel truly feminine, like I could pass.

  Back at her house, Melissa helped me get all done up and set up a box fan so that my hair could blow in the wind. I remember the feeling of butterflies when I saw the pictures. It wasn’t much, but I got a small idea of what it would be like to live another kind of life.

  “You’ve gotta come up with a name,” she said to me.

  I used to daydream about what my name could be if it could be different. I wanted something Spanish, something that represented me. And out of nowhere, it came to me: Marizol. I didn’t know anyone with the name, and I wanted to know the meaning. We looked it up—“ocean” and “sun”—and right away, I knew it was me.

  I WASN’T ready to wear feminine clothes in public, but with my new Myspace profile, my friends in the community started calling me Mari. On the weekends, I’d go to the Village to meet up with Miranda and the others. There was a group of us who’d always get together, meeting up at Golden Woks or the pizza shop or the big church on 6th Avenue. We became a little entourage and started calling ourselves the Crazy Eights, even though our number was constantly changing. We stopped by tattoo parlors, dreaming about the tattoos or piercings we’d someday get. We window-shopped for costumes and wigs. We went to parties and Kiki Balls hosted at LGBTQ+ centers around the city, always looking put together and fly. We each had our own fashion sense, but somehow our individual styles always complemented each other’s. People started noticing us, wanting to hang out with us. And our group got bigger and bigger.

  Lorenzo was one of the core members of the Crazy Eights, and one of my closest friends. He was a short guy, half Dominican and half Puerto Rican, and had skin that seemed to glow. He was always smiling. He was quirky and fun, with a sharp, sarcastic sense of humor. But more than this, Lorenzo was a good, sweet guy. He never wanted to be part of any drama, and he always gave me good advice. And even though I never talked to him about transitioning, he’d always tell me that he’d support me if I wanted to do it.

  It was so nice to finally feel like part of a community that supported and loved me. So many people in the LGBTQ+ community are shunned or disowned by their families because of their sexual or gender identity, so they have to create a new family, a family of people like them. I was grateful to have these friends in my life. Every time we met up, it was like an escape from all that we were dealing with at home or at school. We could open up to one another about these sensitive, personal struggles. And we could laugh and feel comfortable and just have the time of our lives, without having to worry about what anyone else would think or say or do.

  OF ALL of the parties and events, the Kiki Balls were my favorite. They were always hot and mad crowded. I loved being there, feeling the excitement heat up the room. I gravitated toward the trans girls, watching them vogue and dance and display nothing but confidence as they walked categories like Face or Femme Queen Realness. You have to be bold to get up there and show everyone who you are, and these women were confident, beautiful, and free. Damn, I’d think. I wanna be just like that. But I didn’t know if I had it in me. Mostly, I was worried about how my family would react. Still, I was always amazed how, at these little balls, you could feel validated. How you could feel like somebody.

  For the category of Face, everything has to be proportioned. Your bone structure. Your eyebrows. Your teeth. Your smile has to be perfect. Your skin has to be baby-soft. One night, my crew and I were at a Kiki Ball at the LGBTQ+ center at 149th Street in the Bronx. We saw that Clarissa was there, from the House of Milan. Clarissa was born to walk Face, and everyone was telling me that I should battle her.

  “No way!” I said. “She’s so beautiful.”

  Miranda smiled at me. “Mari, so are you!”

  “You are the only one who can go up against her!” Lorenzo insisted.

  Maybe I could beat her, I thought. I knew Clarissa was more experienced, but I was young and baby-faced and had
recently had my eyebrows done. I was looking fly in a purple shirt and a purple sweater, with name-plate jewelry: chain, earrings, and ring. I decided to just go for it and walk the way I was, without any makeup or alterations.

  “Okay, I’ll take it home for us,” I said.

  The music for Face began to play, and when I heard the beat, my heart started racing.

  “Lorenzo, what am I gonna do?”

  “Just sell it!”

  The crowd started clapping and chanting.

  And then the emcee called out, “Face Category, come through!”

  There were six of us in total, and we walked down the aisle, two-by-two. The crowd was on both sides, cheering and chanting, but I tried to ignore everything around me and just work it. I touched my face. I lifted my chin to show off my bone structure. I looked up high above the crowd. I got a rush from putting myself out there, from doing something I’d never done before. The whole time, I was thinking to myself, I can’t believe I’m doing this!

  The judges touched my face to test for smoothness. When it was time for scoring, they lifted their fingers: ten, ten, ten, ten. I was on to the second round, and then the next. Before I knew it, it was time for me to go up against Clarissa, one-on-one.

  I got really nervous. Before the final round began, I said to my friends, “Y’all made me do this—you better be going crazy!” They moved to the front of the room, near the judges’ table, right beside the House of Milan. It was a real battle, what everyone had been waiting for, and the chants shook the house.

  Crazy Eights!

  Milan!

  Crazy Eights!

  Milan!

  To win Face, you have to keep your face serious and stern. You have to let your expression say, “I’m the shit, and I know it!” During that battle against Clarissa, I let myself get distracted by the crowd. I became more timid. In the end, Clarissa won the grand prize, but I wasn’t bothered by that. I had done something new. I had put myself out there. I was starting to find myself.