Some Assembly Required

by Arin Andrews

  Bambi was a baby flying squirrel I’d found the previous spring in the mouth of one of the cats that lived in our back woods. I had managed to wrestle him free, and Mom helped me nurse him back to health. I named him after the Disney orphan, and soon he was gliding from the cabinets to the floor and driving all the dogs crazy. Of all the broken animals that had ever come to stay with us, he was the best. In a weird way I wished I were like that little creature—a mammal that could soar. I couldn’t help but relate while watching him gain strength and learn how to use his body.

  At our next appointment the following week, Mom was visibly more relaxed, and it turned out that she had fully opened her mind at the perfect time.

  “The Equality Center has asked me to start up a teen transgender support group at their headquarters,” Taylor told us. “I’d love it if the two of you would join. I really think it would help strengthen your relationship.”

  I looked at Mom hopefully.

  “Okay,” she said. “I think I’d like that.”

  11

  I’d heard of the place before, but it was the first time I’d gone to the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center. It’s located on a remote corner of downtown Tulsa, and they offer tons of different kinds of support to the LGBT community—everything from legal services to HIV testing to yoga to AA meetings. They even have their own lending library and a gay pride gift store.

  The first thing I noticed when I walked in was how clean and fresh it smelled. Like some kind of gently scented soap, friendly and safe. And the volunteers at the front desk were immediately welcoming. They showed us the way to one of the meeting rooms on the second floor. We were the last to arrive, and I froze for a moment at the door. It was a group for all trans teens, but at that moment every single person there happened to be a trans guy. I couldn’t believe there were this many in our area. And even though I was wearing my normal boy outfit of jeans, a plaid shirt, and a baseball cap with my hair down, the difference was staggering. These dudes all looked like they had transitioned long ago, and almost all of them had facial hair.

  I hunched my shoulders over and stomped to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat with my legs extra wide. “Hey. I’m Emerald,” I mumbled in what was possibly the deepest voice I’d ever used up to that point.

  I had to overcompensate, because not only was I the only one who could still potentially be mistaken for a girl, but I was also the youngest in the group by at least five years.

  But everyone quickly made me feel at ease. We went around the table, and everyone had a chance to talk about something that they were struggling with. When I’d walked in, I hadn’t been able to fathom these guys having anything to complain about—they were all exactly what I was aspiring to be. But of course life is so much more complicated than that, and each of them had something painful or troubling that was going on, and everyone in the room was so kind and offered helpful advice to one another.

  When it was my turn, I was still a little too overwhelmed to say much aside from the fact that I knew I was a trans man and had just started the process of transitioning. Mom squeezed my hand under the table when I was done. Almost everyone in the group came up to me afterward and congratulated me on starting out, and Mom, too, for being there to support me. As much as the experience meant personally, I knew it was important for her to get the reassurance that there was a community out there for me.

  I bought a small plastic rainbow bracelet from the gift shop on my way out, and when we got to our car in the parking lot, one of the guys from the group, a man named Danny, stopped us.

  “I don’t think you understand what a big deal it is that you’re here,” he said to Mom. She blushed.

  “No, seriously,” he said. “It’s really rare to have parents that are so on board. Mine sure as hell weren’t.”

  “To be fair, it’s taken me a while to come around,” Mom said.

  He nodded. “Totally understandable, but you did. That’s what counts.”

  We ended up talking with him there in the lot for almost an hour, about how we’d gotten to where we were, and what things had been like for me as a kid.

  “By the way,” he said as we were finishing up and saying our good-byes, “I’m not sure if you realize this, but you totally pass as a guy already.”

  “Seriously?” I asked, grinning. “You mean it? Even with the long hair?” I shot Mom a look.

  “Even with the long hair,” he confirmed.

  “That went well,” Mom said when we finally got into the car.

  I nodded. I could still smell the scent of the Equality Center on me, and I realized it was coming from the bracelet I’d just bought. I lifted my wrist up to my nose and held it there, letting the faint fragrance envelop me, making me feel warm and accepted.

  • • •

  About a week later Mom let me get another haircut. She still wasn’t ready for the full boy cut, but she let me get it done all shaggy and down just below my ears, like Shane, my favorite character from The L Word. She was such a chick magnet on that show, I figured I couldn’t go wrong.

  We also started having much more serious discussions about testosterone.

  “Well,” she said, “I suppose it would be easier to transition in high school than it would be once you’re out in the work field. Better to have your life already started, once you’re ready to actually start your life.”

  “Yes,” I agreed immediately. “You are absolutely right.”

  “I’ll keep thinking about it,” she said.

  I started working out a ton, trying to get abs and build up my arms, in preparation for the day when she would finally relent. I wanted to get a head start on my body so that once the changes started, I’d already be at a point to make the most of the improved muscle development that can come with taking testosterone. I’d been doing tons of research on it, and even put together a whole notebook for my mom, full of facts and info on the effects of testosterone, with tabs that divided up certain topics, like proper injection techniques and common myths—such as that it would turn me into a raging monster.

  And just a few weeks later, for my sixteenth birthday, she finally relented and said that I could cut my hair short, the way I wanted.

  I went back to Spalon and watched in the mirror as the final inches were cut away. And there I was. Me, for the first time ever, staring back.

  • • •

  Mom took me to an Italian restaurant for dinner to celebrate, one of those places with large sheets of paper covering the table and a cup of crayons to draw with.

  “It’s time we pick out your new name,” she said after we’d ordered. “I’ve been think about it a lot, and I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t you call yourself Emeril? You know, like Emeril Lagasse! It sounds like ‘Emerald,’ and so that way people won’t have such a hard time with the change!”

  She beamed, clearly proud of herself.

  “No way,” I said. “First of all, who wants to be named after Emeril Lagasse? And second, no one would actually call me that. They’d just keep saying ‘Emerald’ because it’s basically the exact same name but with a d sound at the end.”

  Her face fell, and I felt bad. As exciting as this all was for me, I had to grant her some leeway. The name she’d given me was so specific. “Emerald” meant so much to her.

  I grabbed a red crayon out of the cup. “What if we play around with my middle name?” I said, and wrote out “Ariana.” “I know I don’t want it to be something random, like Jay. It should be meaningful.”

  “I like that idea,” she said with a smile. She wrote it on the table too and squinted.

  “What if we just dropped the a and made it ‘Arian’?” she asked.

  “Arian,” I said out loud, trying it out.

  It had a familiar ring, but I couldn’t place it. I liked it. “Arian,” I said aloud again.

  “Arian,” she echoed. “I could get used to that, easy!”

  “I wonder if there is anyone else with that name,” I said, pulling
out my phone. “I feel like I’ve heard it before, but I can’t think of anyone.”

  “Arianism” popped up in my browser. “Wait,” I said. “It means ‘a belief that Jesus isn’t a divine being.’ It’s considered heresy.” I scrolled down a little farther and saw the word “Aryan” pop up.

  “Oh, right,” I said, mortified. “It also sounds exactly like the word for Hitler’s idea of the perfect race.”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to work,” Mom said. We crossed it out.

  “What if we just drop another a and make it ‘Arin’?” I said, drawing a line through the fourth letter.

  “Arin,” she said.

  “Arin,” I repeated, feeling it click in my brain. That was the one.

  • • •

  In my family I ended up having to come out as trans only to my cousins. I found out from Mom that she had told Papa and Gigi the week after I’d gotten kicked out of Lincoln. She told me that she had been terrified about their reaction, but they had been incredibly calm and unfazed. They’d told her that since I was her child, they all had to love and support me no matter what. I’d always loved them so much, and hearing that just about made my heart burst.

  Susan already knew too, since she and Mom are so close, and she was immediately on board. Mom wanted to explain it to Wes herself since he was younger. He had a hard time with it.

  “Why can’t you just be a normal sister?” he kept asking me after Mom broke the news.

  “Because I’m not a girl,” I’d say, and he’d continue to sulk. He was unhappy about it, but he didn’t tease me about it or anything. It was more that he started to avoid me. In a lot of ways I still considered him my annoying little brother, though, so it was sort of a relief. He was the least of my worries as far as family acceptance went; I figured that he was young enough to have plenty of time to get used to the idea.

  By the time we told Dad, more than anything else he was upset by the fact that he was the last to know.

  “I can’t believe this has been going on this whole time behind my back,” he grouched. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “Probably because when you found out about Darian, you said that I was too pretty to be a lesbian,” I said. “That didn’t really set up lot of confidence about your reaction to this.”

  He was weirded out for a while, but things went back to normal between us pretty fast.

  I told all my cousins in person. Amanda was uncomfortable with it at first, but Cheyenne just said, “Oh, please. I’ve known that since you were a kid.”

  Before I even had a chance to say anything to Dewayne, he came up to me, punched me on the shoulder, and said, “What’s up, dude?” before wandering off again. And that was that.

  My new name caught on immediately with everyone, as if it were what they’d always called me. Pronouns remained an issue for a while, especially among members of my dad’s side of the family. They slipped up and kept referring to me as “she” for a long time. But they eventually got the hang of it.

  I quit CAP so I could put all my energy into transitioning, but I stayed close with Jon and Samuel and a few others. None of them had any problem with me changing my gender. I started telling my few friends at school, like Alyssa and Jessica, to call me Arin. They accepted it too (with the exception of Jessica’s occasional grumblings). Mom and I worked it out with the principal that I could use the nurse’s bathroom so I didn’t make any of the girls uncomfortable. I didn’t want to put myself at risk by using the guys’ room. And besides, the one time a friend took me in there, I wasn’t too impressed. It reeked, and the urinals were full of chewing tobacco wads. But at least there weren’t bloody tampons in boxes next to all the toilets, so that was a step up.

  It was shocking to me how cool the school administration was. There’s an old joke in Tulsa that we don’t just live in the Bible Belt; we live in the buckle of the Bible Belt. And that tends to come with a lot of intolerance. I knew how incredibly lucky I was to have it all happen so fast and so easily. In the trans teen support group and at OYP, I’d heard plenty of horror stories about kids being rejected by their families after coming out as trans or gay. Repeating any of those stories here would be a breach of confidentiality and the safe space these support groups create, but 41 percent of transgender people attempt suicide at least one time in their life, which is around twenty-five times the national average. And I’m still haunted by the movie Boys Don’t Cry, which is based on the story of Brandon Teena, a trans man who was raped and murdered in Nebraska in the early 1990s. (If you’ve never seen it, watch it the second you’re done with this book.)

  I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t take for granted the acceptance I received, that if there were ever anyone who needed support or guidance with their own transition, I would do everything I could to help them. I wanted to inspire other trans kids, the way that Katie Hill, the girl from the Tulsa World article, had. And I wanted to educate cis people about trans rights too. When I mentioned this to Taylor in one of our therapy meetings, he asked if I’d be willing to sit in on a panel discussion at one of the local colleges.

  “It’s for a sociology class,” he explained. “The professor is looking for a few trans people to talk about their experiences, as well as their family members. Would you be interested?”

  The idea of talking in front of a group of strangers was terrifying, but I wanted to stick to my new advocacy resolve, so I said yes.

  Despite feeling like I might pass out in fear when I first sat down in front of thirty-five older college students, the night went off without a hitch. Mom came with me, and we both spoke for about fifteen minutes about my life experiences so far. There was another woman on the panel, pretty with long dark hair, and when she introduced herself, the name sounded oddly familiar. Jazzlyn. As she started talking, I realized that it was Katie Hill’s mother! I was too starstruck to say anything to her after, so my mom introduced us. It turns out that they’d already met at a support group for parents of trans teens that Mom had started going to.

  “The Tulsa World story about Katie really helped me a lot,” I said shyly.

  “I’m happy to hear that,” she said, giving me a little hug. “And I know my daughter would be happy to hear that too.”

  I had no idea that Katie would soon become one of the most important people in my entire life.

  • • •

  A few weeks later Mom and I went to the trans support group, but it was a smaller crowd than normal that night. I tended to like those meetings better. It felt more intimate, and everyone got a little bit more time to talk about whatever it was they needed help with.

  We were going around and saying our names, when suddenly the door flew open and a girl walked in. Her dark hair covered her face at first.

  “Sorry,” she murmured as she sat down in an empty chair across the table from me. She looked up finally, and I felt my heart drop. It was her. Katie Hill. When it was my turn to talk, I rambled on about school, too distracted by how pretty she was in person to even really know what I was saying.

  After the meeting I introduced myself.

  “That story that ran in Tulsa World was amazing,” I said. “It really helped me feel like I wasn’t alone.”

  “Thanks,” she said, smiling faintly. “I’m really glad to hear that.”

  “I’m hoping that my gender therapist lets me start on T soon. It’s killing me that I haven’t yet.”

  “I’m sure he’ll sign off before too long,” she said. “You seem like you’re in a really good place. Listen, I gotta run. I’m exhausted. It was really nice meeting you.”

  • • •

  I was excited to tell Darian that I had met the girl from the article she had given me. We still sometimes met up at OYP when she was able to get the time off from work, but we had continued to drift further and further apart. I still struggled with her lesbian identity and what it said about us. I wanted to be with a girl who wanted a guy. Plus I was totally caught up in my new life as
an out trans man and getting to mingle with entire groups of other trans and gay teens for the first time in my life. All sorts of new social opportunities were opening up. I started hanging out with Tanya a lot, the person I’d met on my very first night at OYP. And just like I had originally expected, Tanya eventually began to transition and go by the name Dale. I was so excited to help him, especially since he was too scared to tell his family.

  “They will never understand,” he told me one night at OYP. “It’s really starting to mess with my head, being Dale out in the world but still Tanya at home.”

  “Give it a little time,” I said. “I never thought my mom would come around either.”

  He didn’t look very hopeful. “I think our mothers are two very different people,” he said, before wandering off to say hi to another friend. Cassie suddenly appeared beside me.

  “Nice haircut, Cassie,” I said. It was even shorter than it had been the first time we’d met.

  “It’s Carl now,” he said.

  “No way! That’s awesome! Since when?”

  “I’ve always known I’m trans. It just took a while for me to get my shit together and actually deal with it.”

  He said it like transitioning was no big thing, as if it had been as easy as flipping a switch. He seemed so cocky and confident, and I felt myself blush a little. I was a little bit in awe of him. Plus, he was even cuter now than when he had been Cassie. I suddenly couldn’t stop staring at his lips.

  “I gotta take off. You want to walk me to my car?” he asked, bumping his shoulder against my arm and then hopping back slightly.

  “Um, I-I guess,” I stammered. I rolled back and forth on the balls of my feet nervously. Why does he want me to walk him to his car? I wondered.

  He stepped toward me again with a wicked little grin, and I could feel his breath on my face. It smelled like wintergreen gum. “Will you kiss me there?” he asked.

  Oh, that’s why.

  I blushed and felt my whole body tingle. “U-um . . . ,” I stuttered, but suddenly he stood on his toes and flung his arms around my neck, and we were making out. The entire room fell away and went silent in my brain for a few seconds, until my conscience kicked in and I became acutely aware of every sound around us. The thumping music and shouting of other kids became hyper-amplified, and I felt like a spotlight from the dance floor was suddenly pointed directly at us. I pulled away and looked around anxiously, my face burning.