At the Broken Places

by Mary Collins

  “I had to find out from that . . . woman!” she hissed.

  I wanted to remind my mom that she had already found out from me. I had told her first, and she could have been a part of this process. My mom needed more time, and I had no more time left to give.

  I felt, to use an expression from Psycho’s Norman Bates (a terrible role model), deeply mired in my “private traps.” My mother and I argued in circles, and for all of it, neither of us ever budged an inch.

  Our late-night weekend living room conversations only served to put our views into sharper contrast: me, certain I needed legal and physical procedures to confirm my gender; she, distraught, convinced I was ruining my life. Loomis, unsure of how to manage its first out trans student, reacted in earnest accommodation. When it became clear that my mom had not offered a Christmas Party Welcome, they froze communication. My mother, who felt my gender presentation at school was a family affair, was appalled at being “iced out” and never consulted. Because she and her siblings had gone to Loomis, she felt my behavior could negatively impact the entire Collins family and their relationship with the school.

  I took refuge in my social renaissance. While my early Loomis years were marred with reclusion and anxiety, senior year I found endless possibilities in the fledgling confidence coming out had given me. For nearly four years, my oddball presentation and palpable unhappiness had stymied my peers. But now, as my friend Sus put it, things began to “make sense” to them. I made new friends, spent more time with older ones, and actually began to enjoy myself. I cherished the majority support of the student body, but at the time didn’t realize how anomalous it was.

  According to their 2011 study, the National Center for Transgender Equality reported 82 percent of trans youth feel unsafe at school. More than half of these respondents admitted to skipping school on a regular basis to avoid bullying.

  When many of my high school friends came out as gay, bi, or trans in college, I realized that self-pitying perceptions of my own rareness were overstated. I came out in high school, but so many others didn’t or couldn’t.

  The only thing that remained stagnant amid my final lap was the unrelenting tension between my mother and me. Loomis, the one-time source of all my stress and exhaustion, was now my haven. My mom, my truest confidant and advocate, was now part opposition, part victim. I was finally accomplishing everything she had hoped for me—genuine optimism for myself, interesting classwork, a thriving social life—but it all came at the expense of her “daughter,” the one price she was not willing to pay.

  When I graduated Loomis, the purgatorial haze remained.

  I had been granted “permission” to graduate in the masculine style, khakis and a blue blazer with a flower, coincidentally, the pledge uniform of my college fraternity. Students grouped together in common rooms, chatting and getting ready as their families parked. We eventually convened on the quadrangle, a big green lawn dwarfed by trees and cut into four parts by a clay path. There, after much mingling and tearfulness, the genders were split into their two lines and herded onto bleachers. Our delirious, pomaded heads smiled for the camera and then filed through the main academic hall.

  In a yard facing the picturesque entrance road, the senior class found the chairs we would call home for the next four hours. I brimmed with accomplishment and something else . . . disappointment?

  After six months as “Donnie,” I would be graduating under my birth name, “J.”

  My family had financed my education in conjunction with academic scholarships, and this was their official request. Actually, I don’t fully know what their request was. Maybe my mother’s nostalgic wish or her last bid to have “J.” leave Loomis “alive.” It stung and, ultimately, was a shoddy compromise.

  My part of the roll call only lasted a few seconds. I stepped on stage in my blazer and khakis to the cheers of my classmates. The juxtaposition of the distinctly masculine clothes and the feminine name created a strange space. It wasn’t what I wanted; it wasn’t what my mom wanted. But the ceremony moved forward. And with a cloudless sky above and the prospect of lunch ahead, the class of 2011 tossed their proverbial caps in the air (we had no caps).

  I was overwhelmed with bittersweet feelings. I said good-bye to friends and mentors, and savored quiet last moments in places I’d called home. These relationships stayed with me on my journey, and I am infinitely better off for having loved and hated that school.

  I remember my family, my mother, eyes filled with pride for the symbolic occasion.

  The child graduates high school.

  I was going away, further away from them. I was leaving Loomis, and in a stranger, truer sense, I was leaving my family.

  Privately, later that day, someone from the registrar’s office handed me another diploma, one bearing my chosen name. It felt like contraband.

  If I seem callous or cold-hearted toward my mom, know that sometimes I am. When the people we love hurt us, often these are the only behaviors we find strength in. I continued to “live my truth,” knowing that my mother was grieving and in pain because I needed to survive.

  Going into college, I couldn’t cope with my mom’s attachment to the very things I hated most about myself. Just as I needed to feel some space to change what wasn’t working for me, I felt more trapped by her devotion to J., her only child, her only daughter.

  J. is both real and unreal; she existed, she is me, and yet she is not who I am. To look through our house, one would think I have a sister. For a while my mother continued to display photos of me before I was, as Laverne Cox says, my “authentic self.” On low shelves and storage cabinets sat these photos of a slim, smiling girl with long red hair. She would seem happy if I didn’t know her so well.

  During my next four years after Loomis, I continued to start over. For months, my mother and I didn’t speak, and for many more, we continued to clash over increasingly high stakes.

  I met wonderful people during my time in Boston and then New York, called them friends and family. I felt hopeless, undertook exhausting projects, sought help, and practiced caring for my mind and body in new ways. I reveled in sharing life-changing words and ideas. I actively created my own identity, contributed to my own history, and even tried to lend some of my experience to others.

  Amid everything, I wondered when, and if, my mom and I would have our own spring. I wondered if we could begin again.

  Sharing Our Story with Others

  WORD BANK

  Coming out is a phrase associated with the LGBTQ community that describes the outward expression of an internal identification. Coming out of the closet suggests that this identification brings you from a place of repression and hiding to a place of ownership and openness. She just came out as a lesbian. He finally came out to his parents.

  In her 2013 article in Mental Floss, Arika Okrent ties the phrase’s origin to New York’s infamous gay and drag “debutante balls.” Coming out, she writes, “did not refer to coming out of hiding, but to joining into a society of peers.”

  Closeted is a term for someone who never comes out, who has an internal LGBTQ identification not expressed publicly.

  Being outed is when someone else wrongly forces the moment of coming-out upon you.

  Donald Has Something He Would Like to Tell the Class

  Donald Collins

  How to explain, in a culture frantic for resolution, that sometimes the shit stays messy?

  —Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

  My first major coming-out happened when I stood up at my dorm’s Christmas party and said, “I’m trans.” It also happened when I spoke to my mother in our kitchen. And it happened again when I finally created a Facebook at seventeen.

  Much like R. Kelly’s infamous thirty-three-chapter opera Trapped in the Closet, coming out is a process, with exhausting ups and downs, that continues to happen relentlessly.

  Non-trans people sometimes express a strain of entitlement that goes something like this: “I deserve to know if anyone I
meet is transgender.”

  I’m trans. Being trans is a part of my identity. I’m also a writer, an amateur painter, and the proud owner of a used Ford Focus. The compulsion to “know” I’m trans wrongly assumes that this information is necessary for others to have, when most of the time it’s not. The compulsion to “know” also propagates the idea that trans people are hiding something, that we are frauds or illusionists, that we are not real. Our gender is unfairly treated as if it were a costume that we must admit to wearing.

  In her 1990 book, Gender Trouble, theorist Judith Butler famously asserted that gender identity is characterized by “a stylized repetition of acts through time.” This is gender performativity theory, the idea that gender is a kind of behavioral consistency both in and of a system.

  Butler herself was quick to point out that this doesn’t mean we all have the empowering ability to constantly change our gender depending on what clothes we put on in the morning. As Sarah Salih explains in her essay on Butler, our “choices” surrounding our gender exist within a “regulatory frame.” Rather than artists with infinite supplies, daily creating new and exciting works of gender, we’re kind of stuck with paint-by-numbers.

  Many scholars and thinkers have expanded on Butler’s theory or challenged other, more rudimentary “performance” based theories. Julia Serano recalls her own experiences as a trans woman in doing so, asserting, “Many of us who have physically transitioned from one sex to the other understand that our perceived gender is typically not a product of our ‘performance’ (i.e., gender expression/gender roles) but rather our physical appearance (in particular, our secondary sex characteristics).”

  If you do not fit easily into a visual gender category, you are complicating someone’s constant categorization of all nearby bodies. You are challenging the entire system of gender on which the viewer’s identity is built. Oftentimes, onlookers may seek to fix this processing glitch by avoiding (“Don’t stare, honey”), clarifying (“Are you a boy or a girl?”), or accosting (“What are you doing in this bathroom?”). They might just burn you with their laser eyes.

  It’s important to establish the weight of both sides when it comes to the compulsion to “know” and the decision to share. On one side, we have curiosity; on the other, we have a potential minefield. Many, if not most, trans people do not get to opt out of the minefield.

  Coming-out scratches a variety of itches. It can be a personal deliverance or a medical or clerical necessity. The following are situations when I came out for one reason or another:

  Coming out to a café cashier at a bus station to explain why the name on my credit card doesn’t match my appearance.

  Coming out to the bus driver a few minutes later to explain the same thing about my license.

  Coming out to my tattooist, because I really liked her and it seemed chill.

  Coming out to a new doctor in Hartford, Connecticut, and again when I move to Los Angeles.

  Coming out at a party to the friend of a friend, whose own sibling is gender variant and who had some questions for me.

  Coming out at two Departments of Motor Vehicles in one day trying to (unsuccessfully) get one of them to change my gender marker from “F” to “M.”

  Coming out in an essay to write about coming out.

  There are many days when I don’t come out to anyone. I just live my life, and some of the people in it know I’m trans and others don’t. A lot of the time, sharing the fact that I’m trans is something I do to establish that I trust someone and want to know them better. Being “stealth” means I have to censor my stories, my history, and my stresses. I can most fully be myself by including “trans.”

  I’ll admit that I often hate the moment when I tell people. I feel them look at me differently. I feel them explaining my behavior with this new information, or at least I think I feel it. I imagine them scrutinizing my body, my voice, even my hobbies. Oh, that’s why Donald bakes so much—he was raised as a girl! I’ve had people tell me I have “women’s hands” and that I stretch better after a workout because “women are more flexible.”

  Gender is a system maintained by a ruthless neighborhood watch (us). We constantly judge and disparage other people’s bodies, both in and out of gender contexts. Are they too fat? Are they too thin? Are they short? Do they have acne? Is it severe? Are they bald? Are their boobs too big or small? I do it all the time in my own head, with the goal of not letting these runaway thoughts get legitimized by speaking them or acting on them. It’s hard not to be obsessed with other people’s bodies when you spend so much time obsessed with your own. And maybe that’s why I sometimes hate that moment after I come out because it makes me feel so self-conscious about my own body and about the way I look at other people’s.

  My coming out: part two (the reckoning) happened my junior year of college. I pledged a fraternity called Phi Alpha Tau, came out as trans on cable news, and ultimately found myself in possession of $23,000. I’ll start at the beginning.

  By the fall of my junior year, I had been on testosterone for almost three years, my name was legally changed, and I lived in my own room on campus as an RA. My mother and I were on decent terms but shaky ground. She knew I was pursuing top surgery to flatten my chest, another physical alteration she couldn’t get behind. I proceeded in the planning stage without her. We were both completely emotionally exhausted; I tried to just keep my own shit together and keep it far from her door.

  I like to think of my experience joining Phi Alpha Tau as some kind of daytime movie special. It’s a feel-good story; it’s a cautionary tale; it’s a melodrama and a buddy comedy.

  Tau (pronounced “Tah”) is a single-chapter fraternity dedicated to the “communicative arts,” which includes film, TV, journalism, theater, music, marketing, and writing. Emerson College, thankfully, has no frat houses, so Tau’s sense of community operates on the organization and commitment of its brothers alone. When I joined, our membership was around thirty.

  I had never considered joining a fraternity before entering college, and I still can’t fully comprehend I’m in a fraternity. Most people I meet can’t either. They ask, “What kind of fraternity?”

  My roommate pledged Tau his sophomore year. I became enamored with his new “brothers,” realizing that many students I admired on campus were also members. A friend and I went out for Tau the following winter. We submitted letters and resumes, were interviewed casually by individual brothers, and then attended a “smoker,” a more formal interview process with the majority of the active brotherhood.

  Fraternities are fundamentally exclusive organizations. They accept the people they want and turn away those they don’t. At any college, especially a smallish one like Emerson, this rejection, however politely worded, hurts. Everyone knows if someone didn’t get a “bid,” the term that describes whether a fraternity wants you or not.

  Tau is inclusive of a variety of personalities: hard partiers, quiet scholars, dedicated entrepreneurs, and brilliant performers. It’s also known for being gay friendly, and when I sought entry, already had one trans member. But like any fraternity, Tau turns people away. To this day, my personal experience of unconditional support from the fraternity clashes with its status as an ultimately exclusive, conditional organization.

  My motives for joining Tau were actually a jumble of contradictions. Fraternity life first appealed to me because it was separate from my “trans” life. It was a place where I could socialize like the extroverted college kid I wished I was and meet people from all different majors. Yet it was also a place where an only child and a trans guy could be called “brother.” I needed validation as a boy, and it felt great when that validation came from other boys. I craved the feverish declarations of this family. That we all loved each other, that our homes were always open to each other, that we were available at all hours for brothers who needed us.

  My mom and I still kept up a tentative correspondence. When I informed her I was pledging, she was surprised but supportive
once I told her more about the fraternity. She always encouraged me to expand my social comfort zone and knew I would benefit from the kind of brotherly support Tau could offer.

  My friend and I gratefully received and accepted bids. Our pledge class of ten convened a night later to begin the “new member process,” a two-week, highly secretive ordeal. Fraternity members joke that pledging is “the most fun you don’t want to have again.” I will clarify that though I was not always having fun during this period, I was never hazed.

  While pledging, we wore khakis, a collared shirt with tie, a blue blazer, and a fresh white carnation during “business hours” and evening meetings. For me, the most taxing part of it was the sheer amount of clothing layers I had to wear. I was still planning my top surgery and wearing binders to flatten my chest.

  About a week into the process I received some bad news on this exact issue. My insurance claim for the surgery, a veritable thesis of paperwork, including proof of my name change, hormone therapy, and official letters of support from a counselor and endocrinologist, was denied.

  Many doctors’ offices that offer gender-confirming surgical procedures don’t even entertain insurance claims because, historically, it’s pretty futile. Only recently are tides turning. Since being “trans” is something that still has to be “diagnosed” to be legitimate in the eyes of insurers, it’s frustrating when medical-care systems won’t actually provide care for the diagnosis they force on you. It’s beyond frustrating; it’s a kind of demolition.

  My doctor’s office did work with insurance, and when it called to tell me the claim was denied, I was devastated. I was also shopping for neckties in an H&M, and so I hurried outside to cry on the curb. My pledge brother Alex reassured me, and we plodded slowly back to campus.