by Ariel Schrag
The boy finished his poem and left the circle to more applause. He had a huge sheepish smile on his face.
Next, a short girl with a blond ponytail entered the circle.
“Julia Serano!” Hazel called out.
“This one’s for Nelly Chua,” the girl named Julia said. And everyone roared and stamped their feet.
“We are often told that we are living in a man’s world,” she shouted in a bold voice, “and in this culture no image represents power more than the phallic symbol, and if the penis equals power, then I am illegally armed.”
Julia was also reading from a piece of paper, but no part of her was trembling. She stood with her feet planted square and looked around the circle, her gaze seeming to cast light on each person she turned her head toward.
“They say it’s not the size of the wand but the magic that it does. Well, after months on estrogen, my penis is pretty darn small, but she has supernatural powers, she’s like some pissed-off ancient Greek goddess, and she can make the most entitled cat-callers and womanizers scurry away with their tails between their legs all because of six small words: ‘I used to be a man.’ And that may make me an object of ridicule, but I am not the butt of anyone’s jokes because I know people make fun of trannies because we are the one thing they fear the most. I am more bad-ass than any gangster, more dangerous than an entire Marine Corps; my penis is more powerful than the cocks of a million alpha males all put together.”
The circle grew tighter and stronger. Through the flickering dark, Adam could see people beating their chests. Their eyes fixed on Julia, riveted, like she was finally explaining to them everything they’d ever wanted to know.
“See, my penis can be deadly, especially to me, and I’ve heard almost every true crime story about what frightened macho boys do to trannies, every bludgeoning and mutilation, bodies beaten beyond recognition—”
“We love you, Nelly!” someone shouted.
“—and I’ve imagined it all happening to me first person. I can feel myself morph into a slow-moving target, and when I walk to my car alone in the dark, I’ll be holding my breath, half expecting that inevitable blow to the back of my head, and sometimes I wonder why it hasn’t happened yet, and sometimes I wonder why they don’t just get it over with—”
Adam felt something huge rushing through him, taking over his body.
“—See, I never wanted to be dangerous, and I spent most of my life wishing that I didn’t have a penis, and some mornings I can barely get out of bed because my body is so weighed down with ugly meanings that my culture has dumped all over me—see, I’ve been made to feel shame and self-loathing so that everyone else can take comfort in what their bodies mean. And if I seem a bit cocky, well, it’s because I refuse to make apologies for my body anymore.”
And the people were cheering and throwing their fists in the air, and before he knew it, Adam found himself screaming, “Whooo!” and stomping his feet and clapping as hard as he could because he felt it, he really did, and he knew he was sad, and he knew he had thought his life was over, but in that moment, with Julia in front of him, shouting out at the crowd and everyone in the circle cheering as one, saying, “Fuck you” to the haters, “we are all different and that is fucking awesome,” he felt happy and lucky—lucky to be part of this.
“Some women have a penis, some men don’t, and the rest of the world is just going to have to get the fuck over it!” yelled Julia, and she marched out of the circle as everyone went wild.
Adam looked over and saw Gillian. She was looking at him too, and he knew, he just knew, she was thinking what he was. With his heart thudding, he walked toward her.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she said.
She was still hiding something, there was still a thing wrong, but her face was softer, something had changed, and he knew there was a chance. They just needed to talk.
“Do you want to go back out to the lake?” Adam asked.
“OK,” said Gillian.
They began walking away from the campsite just as the music started blasting.
“Now let’s have a fucking DANCE PARTY!!” someone shouted into the bullhorn.
They walked along the same path on the shoulder of the road as they had this afternoon. Now there were no cars driving by, and everything was dark and still. Just the forest sounds and music and yells from back at the camp.
“Did you eat the millet?” said Adam.
“Tried,” said Gillian. “Someone gave Jackie a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich they’d brought, and she gave me half.”
They kept walking, moments of silence interspersed with random comments—“I wonder if more people from the festival are actually coming”—and even though it was stilted and definitely weird, Adam could feel hope all around them, pushing them along, urging them toward the lake, where for some reason he felt they needed to go.
When they got to the rocky cove, Adam could only make out hints of how it had looked earlier. Most of the land was mottled gray and indecipherable, but the lake spread out before them under the moon, an endless glistening black.
“Let’s go in,” said Gillian. She took off her shorts but kept her shirt on, and walked toward the water. Adam did the same. He folded his jeans and put them on a rock. He’d been wearing the ACE bandage for over twenty-four hours, and it hung loose but still functional around his hips, under his boxers.
“Eek!” Gillian said, her customary exclamation, as she stepped her foot into the water. And for that moment, her voice sounded normal again. Just her. Adam’s heart squeezed at the sound.
“Ack! It is cold,” he said, stepping in. More than cold, the craggy, barnacled surface of the lake bed punctured at the soft pads of his feet. It was kind of excruciatingly painful.
“I’m going in!” Gillian said, and she dove into the water, immediately swimming as hard as she could out toward the middle of the lake.
Adam dove in too and, after the brief shock of cold, the water felt delicious all over his limbs. He dunked his head with a splash, and everything went dark for a moment; then he burst back out, and it was fresh and cool as the water evaporated off his face and the lake looked brighter than ever, a startling iridescence. All he could see was the infinite water and the looming sky above and the small black dot of Gillian bobbing ahead of him. He dove back in and swam toward her.
“Let’s play Open Water,” said Gillian as he approached.
“Open Water?”
“Like the movie,” she said. “We pretend we’re in Open Water.”
Open Water was a movie that had come out a couple years ago about a couple who go on a tourist snorkeling trip and end up stranded in the open water. Adam hadn’t seen it, but the trailer had given him chills. The sharks could come at any moment.
“It’s after the storm where we lose the group and we get separated from each other,” Gillian instructed. “I’ll go over there.” She splashed back in and began swimming at her rapid pace as fast as she could from Adam.
Adam swam a little ways away and closed his eyes. He imagined he was alone. He imagined he was in the ocean. The sharks were swimming somewhere below him. If he cut himself on anything, they would smell the blood and come find him. He looked away from Gillian, where it was only the open expanse. It was just him in the open water. The purest version of alone.
“Adam! Adam!” Gillian was shouting. He turned his head and saw her, miles and miles off it seemed. It was the part of the game where they finally see each other. She had seen him first.
“Gillian!” he shouted. And they started swimming furiously toward each other. And they were still in the movie, they were swimming through the shark-infested ocean in their black and orange wetsuits, but when they came together and clasped hands, their dripping faces almost touching, excited and relieved, he wasn’t sure if they were still acting, or if this was the real them now, if they were smiling at each other.
Gillian’s whole body was shaking.
“Yo
u’re cold?” he said.
She nodded.
“We should go back,” he said. Adam held Gillian’s hand, and they swam back to the shore. The rocks were so rough they could barely walk on them, and they veered to the left, up onto a grassy patch, surrounded by woods. They lay on their backs and stared up at the towering trees leading into the moonlit sky. It was silent and Adam listened to his heart. Always there. He wondered if they would lie here all night like this and fall asleep.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” said Gillian.
The sound of his heart grew louder.
“Yes?” he whispered.
I think I’m actually gay. I like girls.
She was silent for a moment.
“I have this problem with depression.”
“You do?” Adam said. This wasn’t what he had been expecting at all.
“I’ve had it since I was a kid. Like nine. I used to lie down at school and then just not get up. We’d be in the middle of gym, and all of a sudden I would just feel like I couldn’t move. Like even the thought of moving was so depressing to me, I just couldn’t keep doing it, and everyone would be playing some volleyball game, and I would just lie down in the middle of everything.”
She was silent for another moment.
“What happened?” said Adam, unsure of what his question was referring to.
“When I was twelve, it started happening really often, and one time they had to, like, carry me to the car, so I started seeing a therapist. I got a little better after that, but it’s never completely gone away. Sometimes I’ll feel fine for months or even a year, and then I’ll feel it creeping back, the same fear and anxiety. This thing I can’t stop thinking about no matter how hard I try. Like it’s trapped in my brain. I’ve gotten better at hiding it, but I know it will never completely go away. I could feel it starting to happen again a couple weeks ago, and I wanted to tell you, to talk to you about it, but then you were just off with Brad, and I felt like I couldn’t. It felt like everything was always about you. And then you’re just going to leave, go back to Piedmont, and I thought maybe I shouldn’t even tell you. It’s my thing. I have to figure out how to deal with it.”
Adam looked at Gillian’s face and felt something break open inside him.
“Gillian?” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
And she broke too.
“I hate you,” she said. But she was smiling.
“You don’t have to say it back,” he said.
“I do,” she said. “I love you, too.”
And they leaned in and squeezed each other in their heavy wet shirts on the prickly, dirty grass.
Adam thought about how he’d always thought he loved her, had said the words to her inside his head a million times, but how he’d never actually really known her until right now. Why was it that the saddest part of oneself was the most true? She was exposed now, and there was something about this that made his whole body glow with no other feeling but pure love. But as he realized this, a shadow of a thought cursed the edges. If what he loved about her was this private vulnerability, this precious internal shame, what if that was also what she felt for him? The built-in vulnerability of being trans. The private shame that hovers somewhere, sometimes spoken of, sometimes not. Was this what she thought of when she said she loved him? And would she still love him without it?
They were kissing now, their hands grabbing at their wet shirts, dragging dirt and grass through each other’s hair. Her tongue in his mouth and the way she tasted and smelled and how there was nothing he could ever want more than this. They rolled in the grass and groped desperately at each other.
“I wish I could feel you in me,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“Just you, not the thing.”
“I know.”
“I want it so bad,” she said.
They were silent for a moment. Kissing, grabbing. Adam could hear the faint music and shouts from the Camp Trans dance party still going strong.
“Are you wearing it?” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“I want you.”
“Just a minute,” he said. And he staggered off her and stumbled slightly down the hill, where his jeans were folded. His whole body was buzzing with an unreal sensation, like he was sleepwalking or lucid dreaming. He took his wallet out of his back pocket and the condom that was inside it. He had put it in there sophomore year. For two years it had stayed there, stuck between an old ID and his Claremont gym membership. He unraveled his ACE bandage, dropped it on the ground, put the condom over his hard penis, and stepped back into his jeans.
Back on the shadowed grassy patch, Gillian had taken her clothes off. She was shivering in the cold air, but as Adam lay himself over her, her body relaxed and leaned into his. They started kissing again and she spread her legs around him, raised her hips the way she always did, and Adam reached down and into his zipper, his hand grabbing his stiff penis with the condom around it, and he closed his eyes and leaned forward and pushed the head inside of Gillian, and she let out sounds of pleasure and opened her legs wider, and he pushed in deeper, and now he was all the way in and he was moving in and out and she was moving along with him, and a new song came on over at Camp Trans and someone let out a holler, and he moved faster and faster and she pushed harder, and then her knees squeezed together and her hands clenched on his back and she said, “I think I’m gonna come, Adam, I’m coming,” and hearing her say this, suddenly he was too—it was shooting out of him and into her, unimaginable waves of pleasure as his whole body shook, and he realized he was sobbing, tears were streaming down his face, and these sounds were coming from his throat, these startling crow calls he could barely recognize as his own, and the tears were falling on Gillian, and she stared up at him as he cried and sobbed. His head fell into her neck, her arms around him.
“Gillian?” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m not trans.”
“I know,” she said.
And they held each other in the middle of the sprawling dark woods.
Chapter 16
BACK IN PIEDMONT at home, Adam would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and think he was still in the closet-room in New York. But unlike that room, where no matter how long you waited, it always remained an impenetrable black, the objects in this room would slowly come into focus, and he would remember where he was. All his old objects had new meanings now, though. Everything did.
That night with Gillian in the forest, they’d staggered back to the campsite, clutching hands but not talking. They’d been awake for almost forty-two hours and were so exhausted that as soon as their bodies reached their sleeping bags, they’d instantly fallen asleep.
A couple hours later, when the morning sun came blinding in through the thin green tent, Adam woke up to Gillian’s open eyes, her face resting close to his.
“Last night actually happened, didn’t it?” she said.
Adam nodded, nervous.
Everything came out then, the torrent that had been building the past month and a half. How he was not twenty-two but in high school, the plan for the summer with Casey, Calypso in the bathroom at The Hole, the panicked lie at the Gay Marriage party, the attempt and failure to tell Gillian over pizza, the godforsaken ACE bandage, and how once he was inside the lie, he couldn’t get out. How she said she would never date a bio guy and sometimes he would stare at her and think, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do.
Gillian stared at him now and took it in, her expression only receptive.
“Did you really actually know?” Adam asked.
Gillian paused and looked down for a moment. “Well, I definitely didn’t know you were—how old are you?”
“Um, seventeen, eighteen in six and a half weeks.”
“Which could get me thrown in jail.”
“No! No one has to know!” said Adam, instantly embarrassed by how girlish
and frantic he sounded.
Gillian shifted and looked at Adam out of the corner of her eyes. “It still feels a little creepy . . .”
“You’re not creepy. If anything, I’m the one who’s creepy.”
He still wasn’t sure what she was thinking. What it meant that it was all out there. She wasn’t screaming at him, but he still didn’t know, and his whole body stayed tensed with hope. He reached down and fiddled with the zipper on his sleeping bag.
“What about . . . the other thing,” he said.
Gillian was silent for a while longer.
“Yeah,” she said. “That.”
She told him how ever since they’d had sex that night after Bound, she had started thinking of him as a bio guy, fantasized about him as a bio guy, with a real penis. That in a way, he had ceased being trans to her. She said when they started having sex on the grass in the woods and she realized what was happening, it was terrifying and exhilarating all at once. But that it was also as if some buried part of her had known all along.
“It’s still kind of crazy . . .” she said. She sat up and curled her arms around her knees, looking away from Adam, at the tent’s door. “Like I can’t stop replaying everything now that I know . . . I mean, it’s a little humiliating—”
“No!” said Adam, sitting up too. Her expression had gone cold, and for a moment he thought it was over.
“I mean, it’s kind of like, who are you?” She shot him a look.
“I’m me,” he said desperately.
They looked at each other.
“I swear that’s it,” he said.
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
“You swear.”
“I swear . . . I’m a seventeen-year-old boy who lives in Piedmont and pretended to be trans. That’s it. Everything else is true.”
And he watched as Gillian’s face shifted into that same amused, curious look, like the one she gave him the night he threw the drink on her.
“Do you still like me?” Adam whispered.
“Yes,” Gillian whispered back.
They lay down and inched closer, their hands slowly moving onto each other.