Adam

by Ariel Schrag

  “What’s going on with Boy Casey?” Adam asked, turning his head from the television.

  Casey continued staring at her laptop. “I dunno. Catching herpes from someone.”

  “You still gonna see him?”

  “Not really in the mood to get herpes right now . . .”

  “Hazel could have herpes.”

  “Hazel does not have herpes. Anyway, we have safe sex.”

  “Safe sex? With a girl? What is that?”

  Adam felt weird about how personal they were suddenly getting, but now he needed to know this stuff.

  “Safe sex is important for lesbians too,” said Casey. She shut her laptop and turned to Adam. She was revving up for a lecture. Good.

  “There’s dental dams, latex gloves, condoms for toys . . . and you should always boil.”

  “Boil what?”

  “Your dildo, if you’re using one.”

  “You do all that stuff?”

  Casey gave Adam a weird look. She wasn’t used to him being so nosy. He needed to be careful. Back off a little.

  “Or whatever,” he added. Eyes back on the TV.

  “Well, I have . . .” said Casey, instantly wanting the attention back. “With Hazel, it’s . . . different.”

  “Why do you like Hazel so much?” said Adam. “Boy Casey wasn’t that bad . . .”

  “You hated Boy Casey! Hazel is just . . .” Casey paused to stare into space as if she was conjuring Hazel’s perfect image. “I just really like her . . . Did you know she got sixteen hundred on her SATs? When she was nine, she, like, built her own computer.”

  Adam thought about how Casey always had to dumb herself down around Boy Casey. It wasn’t that Boy Casey was stupid, just that Casey was clearly smarter than him and this was apparent in any conversation. Probably the thing that annoyed Adam the most about Boy Casey—more than his self-centeredness—was that he thought he was just as smart as Casey when he obviously wasn’t. Adam was pretty sure Boy Casey even thought he was smarter than Casey—which was just another example of him being less smart. Adam would never admit it to Casey, but she was pretty much the smartest person he knew.

  “Her favorite authors are Philip K. Dick and Donna Haraway,” said Casey, still on Hazel. “She identifies as a cyborg.”

  “She what?”

  “Hazel identifies as a . . . never mind.” Casey turned back to her computer.

  “Well . . . I actually didn’t think Boy Casey was that bad,” said Adam. “He was kinda cool.” The trans lie paled in comparison to this one.

  Casey shrugged.

  Adam’s eyes returned to the television—an old Friends rerun. He tried focusing on the show, but his brain just started volleying back and forth again. Tell her. Don’t tell her. Everything each character said seemed to steer him violently in one direction or the other.

  Adam turned off the TV and walked into the bathroom. He shut the door and stared at himself in the mirror. He remembered the scary thing that had happened just five days ago, the night before the rally. That would never happen again. He had Gillian now. He had a good fucking thing in his life, and he had to hold on to it at any cost. The thing had happened when he’d realized he had nothing. Was nothing. Did you really need another person to make you who you were? Yes.

  Adam leaned in close to the mirror and examined his skin. God, it was a fucking mess, as usual. Not “pizza face” disastrous like Raphael at school, who might as well just commit suicide, but pretty bad. Adam had three zits on his forehead under his bangs—thank god for bangs—one zit in the crevice of the side of his nose, and one to the left of his chin. His hands reached up to squeeze the chin one, but he knew that would only make it worse. Fuck it—he didn’t care, he needed to get rid of it, and he needed to get rid of it now.

  *Squeeze*

  Argh! A million times worse. Adam lathered on soap and furiously scrubbed at his face. Ugh. Whatever. There was nothing he could do. He’d had zits when he met Gillian on Saturday, so she wouldn’t be surprised. Just unfortunately reminded.

  “Whoa, sorry, dude.” Ethan opened the door to the bathroom.

  Adam reached for his toothbrush to pretend as if he were doing something other than squeezing his zits.

  “You nervous about your date?” said Ethan. “I always stare at myself in the mirror for at least five hours the day before a date.”

  “Yeah . . .” said Adam. He put the toothbrush down.

  Ethan leaned against the doorjamb. “Gillian. Did you guys make out?”

  Adam was touched Ethan remembered her name. “Yeah, we kissed,” he said. The kiss replayed in his mind.

  “Well, that’s good,” said Ethan. “At least you don’t have to worry about that hurdle. Now you can just go up and kiss her the moment you see her.”

  Adam’s face went white.

  “Don’t be scared!” said Ethan. “Seriously, it’s in the bag. This girl likes you. You guys already hung out, so she wouldn’t have made the date if she didn’t like you. You’re in a top-notch position here. Not that you don’t still have to play it cool, but . . .”

  “Wait,” said Adam. He felt hot and panicked. “How do I . . . play it cool?” The moment from last Saturday night of feeling cooler than Ethan had long passed, and Adam suddenly, desperately needed his advice. Ethan with his perfect clothes and chill attitude and hot ex-girlfriend. Ethan! Ethan would tell him how to make everything right.

  Ethan sauntered into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub. Adam closed the toilet lid and sat down, too.

  “OK, well, here’s the thing,” said Ethan. “Girls are strange, mysterious creatures. Guys are simple. We kind of just let you know how we feel. But girls have to play by this crazy set of rules where—OK, you know how in middle school, if you had a problem with another dude, you just punched him in the face?”

  Adam thought about the time Colin had punched him in the face. And the time this kid Rodney had punched him in the face. And the time this kid Eric had punched him in the—

  “Uh-huh,” said Adam.

  “Well, while that was going on, girls were having their own types of fights—but instead of fists, these fights were about secrets, and backstabbing, and rumors, and lies, and calling up your best friend from someone else’s phone, whispering, ‘You’re a whore,’ and hanging up. You know?”

  Adam nodded.

  “That shit doesn’t just go away when you grow up and know better. It burrows into your brain and makes you crazy.”

  Adam wasn’t entirely sure where Ethan was going with this.

  “What I’m saying is it’s just more convoluted with girls. And while there’s something kind of sexy about all that mystery, it’s also kind of sad.” Ethan stared at Adam with fixed, intense eyes.

  “So, what do I . . . do?” asked Adam.

  “Just stay sensitive,” said Ethan. “Because the moment you start to feel exposed—that’s the moment she’s exposed too. And that’s what love is . . . when someone reaches inside you, through all the blood and nasty guts—they don’t give a shit how messy their hand gets—and then they pull out this perfect thing, and that thing is the real you.”

  Adam nodded again. He wondered whether Ethan was going to get to the part about how to “play it cool.”

  Ethan stood up and stretched like he was about to leave.

  “I just gotta figure out how to not be so nervous,” said Adam quickly, not wanting Ethan to go.

  “You’ll be fine,” said Ethan. “Trust me. Once you’re in it, it will just all be happening and you’ll know what to do.” Ethan stood back and looked Adam over. “Now are you gonna shave first or what? ’Cause that high school–mustache look is not cool.”

  Adam ran his finger across the bristle on his upper lip. His cheeks and chin were still infuriatingly smooth, no matter how many times he’d dragged the razor over them.

  “You can use my electric razor,” said Ethan. “I’ll switch out the blade for you. I’ve seen those shitty drugstore razors you use
.”

  “Cool, thanks,” said Adam. He had never used an electric razor before. His dad had one, but he’d always been too embarrassed to ask to borrow it.

  “You’re gonna need a good shirt, too,” said Ethan, eyeing Adam’s grubby T-shirt. “Hold up.” Ethan ran into his room and came back with a faded blue flannel. “It’s Steven Alan,” he said, handing it to Adam.

  “Thanks,” said Adam. He put his arms through the soft flannel and buttoned up over his T-shirt. The flannel smelled like fresh detergent.

  “Nice,” said Ethan. He looked up at Adam’s hair. “Now product.” Ethan grabbed a small black tub of some stuff off the sink counter, dug his fingers in, and mussed it into Adam’s bangs. Adam felt that tingling feeling again, like with the stewardess on the airplane when he was eight. Ethan concentrated on Adam’s hair, separating strands into perfectly messy clumps. Adam stood very still, not wanting Ethan to stop.

  “All right,” said Ethan, standing back to admire his work, “that looks good.” He twisted Adam around to face the mirror.

  Adam couldn’t help smiling. For like the first time ever, he actually liked how he looked.

  ***

  Adam lay in bed. It was midnight. His date with Gillian was in exactly eleven hours. Eleven hours to decide whether or not he was going to tell her.

  If he decided not to tell her, it was very possible she would ask him questions about being trans, in which case he needed to be prepared to answer those questions. He couldn’t just respond with, “Oh, actually I’m not trans.” He needed to be able to consistently pretend to be trans until the right moment came to tell her he wasn’t.

  But what sort of questions would Gillian ask?

  “Why did you decide to be trans?”

  “I just always felt like a boy inside.”

  Well, at least that was true. What else, what else . . . Adam’s mind was blank. He dragged his laptop onto the bed, clicked on his sister’s Facebook profile, and then clicked on Boy Casey’s. Shit. It was private. The only thing Adam could remember from when he’d seen it before was “ABOUT ME: I’m an artist.”

  Adam and Gillian weren’t Facebook friends yet, but if they became them, he could always adjust his info as needed. Or maybe he’d just say he doesn’t “do” Facebook. Yeah, that was cooler anyway. He didn’t have to worry about her searching for him on the Internet either. When you typed “Adam Freedman” into Google, about five million other people popped up first. He once scrolled through fifty-nine pages of entries before finding his name on a list for a Claremont kids’ doubles tennis tournament from three years ago. There wasn’t even a picture.

  Adam clicked over to Google and typed in “trans guy.” The first search entry was a Wikipedia page.

  A trans man, trans guy, FTM is a transsexual or transgender man: a person who was assigned a female gender identity at birth, but who feels that this is not an accurate or complete description of themselves and consequently identifies as male.

  Duh. This wasn’t helpful. Adam noticed a YouTube video and clicked on that. A guy with shaggy blond hair wearing a hooded sweatshirt sat on a bed. He was talking about how he’d just hung out with his cousin, a “bio guy.”

  “I hadn’t seen him since we were, like, ten, and we’re both twenty-one now. At first, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, just how unfair it is he got to be born with a penis, and I didn’t. And wondering if he thought less of me. But once we started talking about it, he was pretty awesome. He said he has mad respect for trans men, because we’ve had to struggle, and he even said he’s actually wondered what it’s like to have a vagina. . . . He was just really open. I told him how it’s just unbearable sometimes . . . having the wrong part down there.”

  Adam’s hand reached into his boxers and over his penis.

  “Like when I’m having sex with my girlfriend—my fiancée—and I want to ejaculate, but I can’t . . .”

  The guy’s name was Luke Trevor. He looked completely like a real guy. Adam never would have thought he was trans. He clicked on another luketrevor video. The title was T-Shot Day, and it showed Luke about to inject himself with T.

  “I’m finally beginning to dig how I look. More like a man and not a little tween anymore.”

  Luke plunged the syringe into his thigh and Adam winced.

  “My dose is one hundred milligrams a week. Half a cc.”

  Adam grabbed a magazine and pen off the floor. He flipped open to a page and wrote in the margin: “100 mg a week. Half a cc.” “How much T do you take?”

  YouTube had dozens of luketrevor videos. Adam clicked on Becoming Me: Music Video. A song played over a series of shots of Luke: As a little kid. As a teenager on a BMX bike. In a hospital bed after surgery. Hanging out with friends. Standing on a cliff, arms raised in the air. Adam paused the video on the cliff shot. Luke was shirtless and his chest looked like Boy Casey’s had. Curved scars underneath lopsided nipples. If Adam made out with Gillian, he would have to keep his shirt on. Make out with Gillian. Adam’s heart sped up, and he replayed the subway-stop kiss. The video ended with white letters on a black screen: AGAINST ALL ODDS: JUST BE YOU.

  Adam continued clicking on luketrevor videos. He was utterly entranced. Before he knew it, two hours had gone by. There were videos of Luke and his friend Alex—also a trans guy. Luke getting a piggyback ride from Alex, or Alex pretending to have anal sex with Luke. There was a video from Luke’s birthday: “What’s up from Kansas City! It’s my birthday. That’s all. Just wanted to capture the moment . . .” Videos of Luke’s mother and grandmother, both avoiding looking into the camera, Luke talking about how much he loves them. A video of Luke telling his “coming out” story—how he’d tried to pee standing up as a little kid and his babysitter freaked and told his parents. Adam wrote down “tried peeing standing up” on his magazine.

  Then the videos took a dark turn. There was one posted by someone named donttrustluketrevor, a static picture of a freeway overpass. The video was silent, and over the image of the freeway, little boxes of text popped up and then disappeared: “Luke Trevor is a fraud” . . . “a phony” . . . “a scammer” . . . “a traitor.” Adam felt an eerie chill. He liked Luke Trevor. Why was somebody saying all this stuff? . . . Who was Luke Trevor?

  Adam clicked on a video from only three weeks ago, titled Think You Know Me? Think Again. Luke was facing the camera, shirtless. His blond hair was slicked back, and he was wearing sunglasses. It kind of looked like he was going bald.

  “I just need to say that there’s a lot more to me than Luke Trevor. A lot of people are angry because their penis pump kits aren’t working, but what people don’t understand is that—”

  What was he talking about? Adam wrote “penis pump kit” on his magazine.

  “—if there’s a problem with your pump kit, then you need to take it up with the manufacturer, not me. I agreed to promote it, but that’s where my involvement ends. I know there are a lot of people who hate me, but you know what? They don’t know the slightest thing about me. There’s a lot more to life than the Internet, so just because you saw me on YouTube, don’t assume—”

  Adam clicked the video off. He was starting to feel nauseous. It was 2:37 A.M. and he needed to get to sleep. He’d gotten so involved in Luke Trevor’s life, he’d barely accumulated any useful information. Adam clicked on one more video titled Metoidioplasty vs. Phalloplasty by Luke’s friend Alex.

  Unlike Luke, you could kind of tell that pudgy Alex used to be a girl. He sat on a living-room couch.

  “So I’ve finally decided what kind of bottom surgery I want. I’m going to go with the metoidioplasty. It just makes the most sense for me right now. And I can always get a phalloplasty later on if I want.”

  Adam remembered a conversation Casey and June had had once.

  “Has he had bottom surgery?”

  “No! Most trans guys don’t.”

  Apparently Casey did not know everything about trans guys. Adam wrote “decided to go with metoidioplasty.” H
is eyes were closing and opening in that heavy, sleep-bleary way. He read over his list:

  100 mg a week. Half a cc.

  tried peeing standing up

  penis pump kit

  decided to go with metoidioplasty

  He tried to run the words through his brain like he did when he was cramming for a test. 100mgaweek.Halfacc.triedpeeingstand- ingup.penispumpkit.decided to go with metoidioplasty.

  His eyes were really closing. His head was a hundred pounds. He read through the list one more time, then did it once from memory. Then he ripped the page out of the magazine, got out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom, shredded the page into pieces, and flushed them down the toilet.

  Adam got back in bed, crawling into his sleeping bag. And as he finally allowed himself to close his eyes, he saw the phrases 100 mg a week. Half a cc. Peeing standing up. Penis pump kit. Metoidioplasty appear in little text boxes over an image of Gillian’s face.

  Chapter 9

  THE DATE. Adam woke with a start. He looked at his cell phone: 8:59 A.M. His alarm would be going off in exactly one minute. It was uncanny the way he’d woken up on his own, predicting the time. It must mean something. He checked the phone again, but there was no text from Gillian. Why would she text? They were seeing each other in two hours.

  Adam got up and went to the bathroom. Ethan—who went to bed around 5:00 A.M. and rose around 2:00 P.M.—had left his electric razor out for Adam to use. He’d also placed the hair-product stuff right next to it: Bumble and bumble. Adam turned the razor on and stared at it buzzing. He brought it closer, and then even closer to his upper lip, his hand trembling a little, terrified he would slip and get a gash in his face and have to tell Gillian his mom had died so he couldn’t make it. But once he pressed it to his skin, it stopped being scary. It felt smooth and effective. When he finished, there was only one small pinhead of blood. He dabbed it with his finger and put it on his tongue.