Some Assembly Required

by Arin Andrews

  I shoved the knife under my pillow, ran downstairs, and pounded on Mom’s door, telling her that I wanted to go to practice that day.

  “Fine,” she said from inside, her voice sounding a million miles way.

  When I arrived at practice, I told everyone that I’d been kicked out because the school thought I was too masculine. They just laughed—being overly masculine was a good thing there. Even if they had any suspicions of their own about my being gay (transgender wasn’t even on their radar), I knew it didn’t matter. They told me not to worry about it, that everything would be okay, and we practiced our drills like it was any other day.

  Dad was waiting for me afterward. I assumed that Mom had sent him because she couldn’t even look at me anymore. But he was there for a different reason. We drove back toward his house as he rambled on about sports, but he suddenly pulled off the main road and stopped in front of a dingy-looking stadium with a big painted sign at the top of the bleachers that read, CATOOSA INDIANS.

  “Welcome to your new school!” he said.

  I looked at him like he was crazy.

  “Too soon, Dad,” I said. “I just got kicked out.”

  “I know, but now you’ll be closer to me. You can come over after school.”

  He was just trying to help, but the idea of starting over again at a new school so fast was too much. I might not have been happy at Lincoln, but it was the only thing I knew. I’d been going there almost my entire life. I suddenly felt chilly. Freezing, in fact. I began to shiver violently, and asked him to turn up the heat and take me home.

  As soon as he dropped me off, I changed back into sweatpants and locked myself in my bedroom. I curled up on the bed and reached my hand under the pillow.

  The knife was cold, but solid. Comforting. I held it to my wrist and gave an experimental push. It left a faint red line in my skin. I tried sawing back and forth a little. It felt right.

  I called Darian, not caring if Mom caught me. She picked up almost immediately. I explained what had happened, but she didn’t get the full impact that it was having on me right away.

  “This is a good thing,” she said. “That place was horrible.”

  “But it’s not about the school,” I said. “This is about me—I am worthless.”

  I started sobbing, and she comforted me, saying all the right things, like how soon everyone would get to know the real me, and that they would love me. That no one would judge. But I couldn’t hear it. All I felt was a rejection so deep and extreme that it cut to the soul, and I wanted it to end. I pushed the knife harder onto my wrist, and watched my pumping artery push the skin up against the blade, as if the blood wanted to be let out. I could barely hear Darian anymore; there was a rushing sound in my ears. I was going to hell anyway. I might as well speed up the trip. Or maybe I’d actually meet God, and I could finally ask him why so many of the people who follow him are so evil. We’d have a real man-to-man.

  A flash of something Darian was saying suddenly shot through my thoughts. “. . . and you’re stronger than them,” she said. “You have to know that.”

  If I killed myself, then the assholes at Lincoln would win.

  “I have a knife,” I said.

  “Then get rid of it right now,” she said.

  I knocked it off the side of the bed, heard the handle thud on the carpet.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” I whispered.

  “You won’t be alone,” she promised.

  We stayed on the phone until the sun came up, and I passed out immediately after we said our final “I love you.”

  I slept late the next morning, and when I went downstairs, I found Mom in her bedroom, staring at the television. She moved aside a little, and I stretched out next to her. We barely spoke the entire day, attempting to adjust to our new reality under the numbing effects of reality television.

  The next day was more of the same, and on the third day I was lying on my bed staring at the ceiling when Mom came in and sat down beside me. She saw the knife, still on my floor, and picked it up.

  “This trans stuff is real, isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s not going away. You’re not going to grow out of it.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “But how are you going to live like this?”

  “When you ignore the fact that this is who I am, it makes me think that life isn’t worth living at all sometimes.”

  She looked at me, and then glanced back down at the knife.

  “You really would have done this?” she asked.

  “I tried.”

  She nodded, and tears started streaming down her cheeks, down her neck. “I will support you. I can’t lose you.”

  “You won’t,” I said. “I’m still me. I’ll always still be me. But I need my body to be my own.”

  She nodded again. And I knew that she finally got it.

  10

  I started attending Catoosa High, and it was pretty much the polar opposite of Lincoln. The classes were cake. It was prime deer hunting season, and teachers and kids alike were constantly skipping to head out into the woods. One day in history class our teacher just showed us a movie about how to gut a stag.

  I made a few casual friends, mostly the misfit stoner kids, along with Alyssa and my future prom date, Jessica. I wore whatever I wanted, which meant loose shirts, jeans, and either a headband or a hat to hide my hair. People constantly yelled out to me in the halls, asking if I was a boy or a girl. A guy randomly came up to me and said, “I’d punch you if you weren’t actually a girl.”

  “Whatever,” I mumbled.

  One day I went to use the bathroom, and when I walked inside, a girl freaked out.

  “You aren’t supposed to be in here!” she screamed. “Get out!”

  I ignored her and slammed the stall door in her face.

  I don’t want to be here either, bitch, I thought as I sat down.

  “No, it’s okay. That’s a girl,” I heard someone whisper.

  Nope.

  • • •

  We were still in therapy with Dr. Benton, and at our first appointment right after I started at Catoosa, Mom just blurted it out.

  “Emerald is transgender,” she said, and hearing it finally come out of her mouth, spoken as a truth that she believed, was almost surreal.

  “Yes, well, I’m not exactly surprised, to be honest,” Dr. Benton said. “The signs were all there. It’s not really my area of expertise, but there’s actually another therapist in the building who specializes in this.”

  His name was Taylor Burns, and Mom called him as soon as we got to the car.

  “Hi, yes,” she said, leaving a message. “I have a daughter who is transgender, and we’d really love to make an appointment to speak with you.”

  She hadn’t called me her son, but she’d at least said the word “transgender” again. I beamed.

  “Can we go cut my hair off now?” I asked.

  “One thing at a time, Emerald,” she said. “One thing at a time.”

  I could live with that. Because I finally felt as though I were going to be able to start living.

  My heart was pounding before my first appointment with our new therapist, and I couldn’t stop fidgeting with the buttons on my shirt. Everything in my life was moving so fast. Just a few days before, I’d been willing to let go of it all, I had been so close to wanting to leave this world, and now that everything had completely turned around, I didn’t want the momentum to stop. I even followed in Darian’s steps and quit dance, so that I could focus all my energy on this new phase of my life. Just because Dr. Benton had suggested Taylor Burns didn’t mean he’d necessarily be the right fit for me, but since he specialized in gender dysphoria—the medical term for people like me who know that they were born into a body that doesn’t match their gender identity—I knew that he could be the one to set me on the road to physically becoming a man.

  After I’d first discovered Skylarkeleven’s videos, I’d memorized all the initial basic steps I’d
have to take: I would need to live publicly as a guy for one full year before I would be allowed to get any sort of surgery, and I’d have to have that period documented by a gender therapist like Taylor Burns. During that time, if he agreed in his professional opinion that I was indeed transgender, he could write a recommendation to a doctor for me to start hormone replacement therapy in the form of regular testosterone injections, which would deepen my voice, stop my periods, increase muscle definition, and help me grow facial hair (among other things, but I will get into that later). After my year was up, I could start reviewing my surgery options with Mom—since I was still a minor, I’d need her permission. But at my first appointment with the new therapist, getting him to agree that I should be on testosterone was my main focus.

  It’s really important to be clear that this was my particular plan for transitioning. It’s not necessarily the same path that every trans man takes. Some get top surgery before starting on testosterone (or “T,” as it’s often called), some can’t take T due to intolerance. Some don’t get any surgery at all. I was following the basic guidelines that doctors and gender therapists have mapped out for transgender people, but transitioning is a deeply personal and individual process that can take any number of different roads.

  For my first appointment I wore jeans, a red-and-black-checkered flannel, and a wool cap pulled down low on my head. I’d realized that with my hair just down to my shoulders now, I didn’t even have to pull it back all the time to look like a boy. If I wore a hat over it, I looked like any other normal skater guy with long hair. In fact, I was passing as male a lot of the time now whenever I was out in public. I could change in the guys’ dressing room at the mall, and no one would even blink.

  “You look like a stoner,” Mom told me in the car on the way over.

  I ignored her. I was too nervous to start a fight.

  We sat in the waiting room until the office door opened and the therapist ushered us in. He had short hair, glasses, a round face, and a beard. I’d been calling him Mr. Burns in my head, so I’d been half-expecting someone like the hunched-over old man from The Simpsons.

  “Call me Taylor,” he said, gesturing toward a small couch. His office looked like someone’s living room—in addition to the plush brown sofa, there was a matching armchair and ottoman, and a fancier-looking chair with a throw blanket draped over the back, which he sat in.

  “So, what are you here for?” he asked.

  Since he was getting straight to the point, I figured I should as well.

  “I’m transgender,” I said. “And I want to cut my hair, change my name, start testosterone, and get top surgery.”

  He didn’t seem fazed at all. “Okay,” he said, as if these were all totally normal things to say. He then asked Mom if he could speak to me alone and she went back to the lobby. “How long have you felt this way?” he asked after she closed the door.

  I talked nonstop for an entire hour. He nodded a lot, jotted down notes, and was warm and encouraging. I felt totally at ease with him. I knew I’d found my guy, and he proved it when he called Mom back in at the end of the session.

  “You have a very nice young man here,” Taylor said.

  I watched Mom’s eyes shoot straight to my hair.

  He explained to her that he would likely end up recommending testosterone, but since I was only fifteen, we’d need her permission.

  “I’d like to have some more sessions before I’m willing to do that,” she said.

  I was bummed, but it wasn’t like I’d been expecting her to automatically say yes. I knew that it was unrealistic for her to jump right on the T-train with me, and Taylor agreed that more sessions were necessary anyway. Since the holidays were about to hit, we made our next appointment for early January. He explained that from that point forward he’d spend time with us both alone and together during our meetings.

  After this first taste of victory, I was tempted to go ahead and cut off all my hair as soon as I got back to my bedroom. But on the drive home I listened to Mom talk about how she liked Taylor, and I realized that this wasn’t going to be the same journey if I didn’t have her support. She was the only member of my family who knew what was going on, and she was so close to fully coming around. I could feel it, and if I acted out now, it would set us back so far. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  • • •

  Christmas was rough that year. After such an awesome first meeting with Taylor, it felt weird to have to go right back into the closet about my gender. And since I was already partially passing as male in public (almost every shop clerk or waiter I encountered called me “sir” based on my looks), it was bizarre to have all the people who supposedly knew and loved me the most keep calling me “she.” When it came time to open presents at Papa and Gigi’s house, Gigi said, “Okay, all the girls go to the tree and open your gifts first!”

  I shot Mom a desperate look. She gave me a sympathetic smile but nodded toward the tree, motioning for me to get down on the floor with all my female cousins.

  “Why don’t you dress like a girl?” Wes yelled at me from the sofa. I told him to shut up, even though I’m sure he was just annoyed that I got to open presents before him. I skulked over to the pile of gifts and grabbed one with my name on it, hating that I felt so ungrateful.

  It was from Gigi, and it was a new knife, a thick, heavy-duty folding model with a beautiful wooden handle. I flipped it over in my hand, appreciating the heft, and saw that it had “Emerald” engraved in huge letters on the wooden part. It was almost the perfect present.

  The absolute best gift I got that year arrived in the mail the day after Christmas. It was from Darian’s cousin’s fiancé, the trans guy. She’d told him all about me, and he sent me a binder—a tight piece of fabric worn over your chest in place of a bra—that flattens your breasts. I opened the box up in front of Mom and pulled out the white ring of elastic.

  “It looks awfully small,” she said doubtfully.

  “That’s the whole point,” I said, running upstairs. I reached my arms up and through it and pulled it down over my chest, maneuvering it into place. It hurt, and even made it a little hard to breathe. But as soon as I slipped a shirt over it, the effect was seamless. It was like there was nothing there. Even when I stood up straight, with my shoulders all the way back. I ran back downstairs to show Mom.

  “It’s like they’re totally gone,” I crowed. “PLEASE can I get my hair cut now? Please?”

  She stared at my chest for a moment before meeting my eyes. “Not yet,” she said. “I’m still not ready.”

  A few days later I went shopping with Gigi, Mom, and a few of my cousins. I loaded up my arms with flannel shirts and had started to head toward the men’s changing room, when I felt a hand on my arm.

  “Nope,” Mom said. “Not with the rest of the family around. Not yet.” She pointed toward the women’s changing rooms.

  I felt like I was stuck, and I couldn’t wait for our next appointment with Taylor. The changes were happening right in front of her eyes, but she was still resisting the inevitable. I was trying to be patient, but I couldn’t figure out what was holding her back. There was some last piece of this puzzle that went beyond the idea of her losing her daughter, and I didn’t know how to solve it.

  I called her on it during our next therapy appointment. “You know that this is happening,” I said. “And you’re being as supportive as you think you can be, and I appreciate it. I really, really do. But how long is it going to take before you can fully accept this? And why is my hair the biggest issue that you seem to have?”

  Taylor didn’t prod. We waited for her to speak. She was staring at her knees and looking like she was doing everything in her power to keep from crying.

  She finally looked up at me. “The binder is fine because I know your breasts are still there. I can even get behind the idea of the testosterone, but that’s because I think it’s something that will initially be mostly invisible. But the hair is external. I’ve seen what yo
u look like with your hair pulled back, and you’re right, I can see a boy in there. And I know that once you take that step, it’s one that I won’t be able to tune out. There’s no going back. I won’t be able to pretend anymore.”

  “Pretend what?” I said, my voicing getting louder. “I’m a guy! And I’m trapped!”

  “I know that,” she said. “I don’t doubt it at all anymore. What I’m having trouble with is understanding how this all fits into the world. What your place is in the natural order of things.”

  That stopped me short. “Are you talking about the Bible?” I asked.

  “I guess that, too,” she said. “But I mean in the even bigger sense. Why, or how, does this even happen?”

  I’d asked myself that a million times and had never been able to come up with a remotely decent answer, except for it being some sort of cruel genetic hiccup, or some weird endurance test that God was putting me through.

  “Are either of you familiar with the term ‘Two-Spirit’?” Taylor asked.

  Mom and I glanced at each other and shook our heads.

  “In Native American culture someone who doesn’t conform to the gender identity they were born into is called Two-Spirit. Since they exhibit both male and female characteristics, they are believed to have the spirits of both a man and a woman. And since they have been gifted with the ability to see the world through both a male and female perspective, they are believed to be incredibly wise. Traditionally they would often become spiritual leaders or healers.”

  We have a little Native American blood in us and have always embraced that distant tie, but it was the first time we had ever heard of Two-Spirit, and it hit a really strong chord with both of us. We were quiet on the way home, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how the sense of time and history involved gave us proof that what was happening to me had been going on in others since humans had first existed.

  It turned out that Mom was thinking the same thing.

  “It just makes so much more sense to me now,” she told me that night while I helped her chop up some vegetables for dinner. “What he said about Two-Spirits often being healers. I mean, look at how you healed Bambi.”