Some Assembly Required

by Arin Andrews

  But it turned out she hadn’t yet—the bags were still in our attic. We dragged them downstairs, and Katie went to town. It turned out that we have the same waist size, and since we’re almost the same height, everything fit her perfectly.

  “I can really have this?” she kept asking. “And this?”

  “Take it all,” I said as she sorted out a huge pile of blouses, jeans, and skirts, many of them with the tags still on. I was engrossed with a mirror, obsessively running my hands over the bumps on my Adam’s apple. It was getting huge, but even better—the time when I usually got my period had come and gone. I was blood-stain-free and still reveling in clearing that hurdle.

  Later that day Katie and I were messing around down behind my house, barefoot in the mud on the banks of the little stream that runs through the valley.

  “So,” she asked slowly, “are you going to let me list you as my boyfriend on Facebook?”

  “I was just gonna ask you the same thing!” I said. I’d wanted to make us “Facebook official” since our first night together but was still a little nervous about coming on too strong and too fast in our relationship. She’d told me more about her ex, Hawthorne. They had broken up only a couple of weeks back, and the last thing I wanted was to be her rebound.

  It turned out, I didn’t have to worry. One afternoon I was on top of her on my bed, staring down at her, and I couldn’t keep it inside any longer.

  “I have something I want to say,” I said.

  She smiled like she knew what was coming. “Yeah?”

  “I love you.”

  There was a long pause, and I was terrified that she wouldn’t say it back, but she did. We held each other and laughed, rolling around on top of the covers. Nothing, not even sex, feels as good as getting a first “I love you” out into the open, and then having it tossed back at you to catch.

  I’d never felt love this pure or strong before, though. It was nothing like the emotions I’d experienced while longing for Darian, because Katie was actually there—I could touch her, hug her, and kiss her. I could take her to all my favorite spots in the woods, and she understood everything about how nature itself made me feel more spiritual than church ever could. While I’d been hesitant to tell my OYP friends that I’d grown up Christian, I could tell Katie everything about my changing idea of God. For a long time after getting kicked out of Lincoln, I’d turned my back on any idea of him. Or her. Or whatever. But as I became happier with myself, I began to slowly get back in touch with that side of myself. And Katie understood. She took the same broad view toward religion that I now accepted—that as long as you cared for other people and took actions to help them, you were respecting whatever idea it was you had of God.

  We were completely in sync with our worldviews, and because of that, things kept getting more and more intense between us physically. I still kept my underwear and binder on when we made out, but we felt ourselves needing to get closer. Even though our genders didn’t match our bodies, we each still had working parts that wanted to fit together. And since she was getting her surgery soon, we knew that wouldn’t always be the case.

  One night when we were making out, she asked if I had a condom.

  “No,” I said. “I never really had any reason to get them.”

  “See what you can do,” she said. She looked down between her legs. “This thing is going to be gone soon. And I’ve never had hetero sex before. Have you?”

  I shook my head. “I’m a virgin in that regard,” I said.

  “I want to do this with you while I still can. It’s going to be our only opportunity. What do you think?”

  As uncomfortable as I was with my vagina, I wanted to as well. I’m a man stuck in a female body, but the parts I was born with still have the ability to feel good. And since Katie had the same dysphoria about her own genitals, I felt safer about making myself that vulnerable.

  At school the next day I approached a group of kids I still hung out with sometimes, and targeted one of them named John, who was always bragging about his sexual escapades.

  “Dude, um, do you think you can get me a condom?”

  “What size?” he asked without skipping a beat.

  “I don’t know, regular?” I said. It wasn’t like I had anything to compare hers to.

  “No problem,” he said. He knew I was trans but was cool enough to not ask me any detailed questions about why I needed one. A few hours later I passed him in the hallway, and he slipped a square piece of clear plastic into my hand. I cupped my palm and glanced down at it, making sure no one could see.

  “Why is it green?” I whispered.

  He shrugged. “Beats me. Have fun!”

  When Katie came over that following Friday night, I dimmed the lights in my room and put Band of Horses on my stereo. Moonlight streamed through the windows.

  “Did you get one?” she asked, stretching out on the bed.

  “Yup,” I said, digging the cucumber-colored prophylactic out of my wallet. I cringe now when I think of my sexual etiquette, but I was so terrified that I just tossed it at her, and it landed on her stomach. “There you go,” I said.

  She put it aside and reached out to me. And as soon as we started making out, all of my fear disappeared.

  I kept my shirt and binder on, but when we finally made love, it didn’t occur to me for even one second that my girlfriend was putting her penis inside me. I was still a man, and she was still a woman, and this was simply a way for us to be as physically close to each other as humanly possible.

  14

  Katie graduated from high school the day before her eighteenth birthday, and the day after that she was set to leave for San Francisco to get her surgery. I was still secretly jealous that a donor was paying for it all, but I continued to bury that thought whenever it bubbled to the surface. I knew that she deserved the gift. She had been working so hard for trans awareness in the Tulsa area for more than a year, giving speeches and interviews, and there was no way her family could have afforded to pay for the procedures themselves. The same donor was also paying for her college tuition at University of Tulsa, provided she kept up at least a 3.0 GPA. Which I knew wouldn’t be a problem for her.

  “Forget 3.0. I’m going to get straight As,” she told me. I didn’t doubt it. She could talk about any subject—politics, religion, the economy, art—with an air of authority that bordered on intimidating. My entire family, including Papa and Gigi, fell in love with her almost as much as I did.

  I went to the mall the day before her graduation to shop for something to wear. I bought a shirt and a blue tie, and stopped by Spalon for a quick trim. I wanted to look perfect for her.

  Mom came with me to Katie’s ceremony. As the school principal was calling out all the students’ names in alphabetical order, I turned to my mom and said, “Isn’t this incredible?”

  “That she’s graduating? Sure.”

  “No,” I said. “Do you realize that it was exactly one year ago today that I first read the article about Katie? And now she’s my girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, that is pretty crazy,” she mused.

  “You and I have come a long way, and I just want you to know how much I appreciate all your support.”

  She squeezed my hand as the name “Katie Hill” came booming out of the speakers, and we leapt to our feet and cheered.

  Our families went to dinner together at a Mexican restaurant called Los Cabos that night. Katie had changed into a black skirt and a red blousy top, and I sat next to her at the head of the table. I tried to concentrate on the conversation, but all I could think about was that after one more day, she was going to leave for two weeks. What if something went wrong? I couldn’t be by her side for what would probably be the most important moment of her entire life.

  And in addition to that concern, the jealousy I kept trying to suppress continued to push to the surface of my brain. I couldn’t help it. I knew that I’d be getting top surgery at some point, but she was getting a vagina, and I’d st
ill be stuck with mine.

  In a way, though, I did already have a new, very small penis. One of the other big side effects of being on testosterone is that it causes the clitoris to grow larger and longer. Mine was the size of a Tic Tac after just two days on T, and by Katie’s graduation, it was a respectable little member and was still growing every day. But it wasn’t anything I could pee out of or use for penetration.

  Sex reassignment surgery for a male-to-female vagina (usually called “bottom surgery”) has gotten pretty advanced. The most commonly used procedure—the one Katie was getting—is called a vaginoplasty, and in the most basic of explanations, the testicles are removed and the shaft of the penis is inverted to create a vaginal canal. A clit is formed using the more sensitive skin from the head of the penis. The new vagina needs to remain open, and this is often accomplished with something called a dilator (basically a medical-grade dildo), so the body doesn’t treat the vaginal opening as a wound and try to close it up. Dilation needs to be done several times a day in the weeks after the surgery, and then once or twice a week for the rest of the person’s life. But once healed, the result is usually indistinguishable from any other vagina.

  Female-to-male bottom surgery, however, is a lot more complicated. Right now there are two types—metoidioplasty and phalloplasty. Again, I’m just going to provide the most basic of descriptions. If you want really detailed reports, you can find tons of information online.

  Metoidioplasty is an umbrella term for several different surgeries, and you can choose to do any number of them, or just one. Essentially, though, a surgeon creates a small penis out of a clit that’s been enlarged by testosterone.

  The first and main step is a clitoral release. The tissue underneath the clit is removed, which lifts it up and out, exposing more length. The doctor can then perform a circumcision on the skin around the clit if you like. You can stop there, or continue with additional surgeries like urethroplasty, where the doctor will reroute the urethra through the clit so you can pee out of it standing up. You can also get scrotoplasty, where skin from the outer labia is used to create ball sacs with silicone testicles; a vaginectomy, which removes the vagina; and a hysterectomy, which is surgery to remove the uterus.

  The cool thing about metoidioplasty is all of the different choices available—you can mix and match to come up with what’s right for you. The downside is that your junk isn’t going to be that big. But for me, and a lot of other trans men, that’s hardly a deal breaker. I’d personally rather look in the mirror and see a man with a small penis looking back at me than see a man with a vagina.

  If size is really important to someone, they can opt for phalloplasty, but it is a much, much more involved form of surgery, not to mention crazy expensive. While metoidioplasty can run anywhere from roughly $2,000 to $40,000, depending on the doctor and how many of the options you go for, phalloplasty tends to start at around $50,000 and can go as high as $150,000. It involves lengthening the urethra and building a penis out of skin taken from a donor site somewhere on the body. (Once again, this is a totally simplistic description.) It’s a major operation, and there are a lot more ways that things could go wrong. But on the upside, you can pick the penis size.

  I was leaning toward metoidioplasty because you can go in stages, and it doesn’t hinder the ability to get a phalloplasty in the future. But the key word was “future.” At that point bottom surgery was still low on my list of transitioning importance. I wanted to see how testosterone would continue to change my body (I’d started growing hair on my ass—a new development that I wasn’t exactly thrilled about), and get top surgery first. And I also wanted to be 100 percent positive about which bottom surgery option was right for me.

  And truth be told, at that exact moment I was more concerned about what Katie’s impending surgery meant for the future of our relationship. Would she still even want to be with me when she got back? Or would she want to be with a guy who had a fully functioning penis? I shifted my legs nervously and felt the comforting weight of my packer, but it didn’t do much to suppress my anxiety. Maybe I’d need to move bottom surgery higher up on my list.

  I watched Katie’s profile as she laughed with her brother, and did my best to push the thoughts out of my head. This was her night, her weekend, and I wasn’t going to spoil it with my moping. Our love was so much stronger than what was between our legs.

  • • •

  We celebrated her birthday at OYP the next night. The place was packed with people, including her friend Michael, who had been her official guest at the gala. I knew that he had feelings for her, but she had always made it clear to him that they would only ever be friends, so I didn’t feel threatened. In fact, I liked him.

  The three of us were standing against a wall, taking a break from dancing, when suddenly Katie got a weird look on her face.

  “Oh no,” she said.

  I followed her gaze toward the door. A tall blond guy had just walked in and was scanning the room.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s her ex, Hawthorne,” Michael said.

  I immediately tensed up and narrowed my eyes at him. I felt my shoulders rise up and back, almost like how an animal will attempt to make itself look bigger when cornered.

  Katie turned to me. “I’d better go talk to him,” she said.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “It would probably make things worse. Don’t worry, I’ve got this under control.”

  Michael and I kept a close watch on her as she made her way through the crowd and pulled Hawthorne off to the side.

  “I’m going to beat the crap out of him if he hurts her,” I told Michael, surprising myself. It had to be the testosterone speaking—I’d never said anything like that in my life. But I meant it.

  “I’m with you,” Michael said. “That guy is an asshole. I bet you anything he’s trying to get back together with her.”

  We watched Hawthorne storm out the door, and Katie came back over to us. Michael had been right.

  “I told him I have someone else in my life who would never treat me like he did,” Katie said, and kissed me on the cheek.

  The song that was playing ended, and one of the volunteers got on the microphone. “Katie Hill, where are you? Get on up here!”

  She blushed and made her way to the stage, where the guy grabbed her hand and lifted it up. “Today is Katie’s birthday, and she’s leaving tomorrow to get her gender reassignment surgery!”

  Everyone in the room cheered and clapped and sang “Happy Birthday.” I saw her wipe a tear from her eye.

  We danced some more and left not long after. We stopped at a gas station and picked up a six-pack of cream soda and took it back to her house, where I gave her the birthday gift I’d picked out, a silver charm bracelet with two charms on it—a butterfly, to represent her transformation, and a heart.

  “That one’s because I love you,” I said. “Oh, and I brought this, too.”

  I jumped off her bed and reached for my bag, and handed her one of my old cross-country shirts that she’d always liked.

  “You can wear it in California,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said, “for both.” She held the shirt up to her face. “It smells like you.”

  She went to her dresser and opened a drawer. “You need something of mine to wear,” she said. She pulled out her favorite hoodie, a black one with thumbholes and a few gray swirly designs on the sleeves.

  “It will be like we’re holding each other when we put them on,” she said.

  We crawled under a blanket on her bed and stared at the clock, too excited to sleep, like kids on Christmas Eve.

  “Are you scared?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Not at all. I’ve been waiting for this my entire life.”

  “I know what you mean. Are you sure they can’t just give me your penis?”

  She smiled, but by then it had already become an old joke.


  • • •

  I almost started crying at the airport the next morning, but managed to hold it together as we said good-bye. She was so giddy, and I didn’t want anything to distract her from that feeling.

  “I’ll call when I land,” she promised, and then she was gone.

  As Jazzlyn followed her toward the security line, she turned and looked back at me. “Now, don’t go getting a new girlfriend while she’s gone,” she said. “Don’t forget about Katie!”

  “Um, that’s pretty much impossible,” I answered.

  Six hours later I got a video message from Katie. She was standing in front of a palm tree, and the sky behind it was a gorgeous pale blue. She had my long-sleeved shirt on.

  “It’s hot as hell here,” she said. “But I’m wearing this anyway. Love you!”

  We talked, texted, and used FaceTime constantly during the days leading up to the actual surgery.

  “See you on the other side,” I said in our last conversation. “I love you. Everything is going to be okay.”

  Mom let me stay home from school that day. I paced relentlessly through Danco, until she finally told me to go outside. I walked over to a nearby lot with an empty office building on it and sat down on the curb, tapping my foot and checking my phone for the millionth time. Suddenly Dad appeared next to me.

  “You’ve got to relax,” he said, just as a strange rustling sound began off to our left. We turned and saw pages of grimy newspaper swirling up off the ground in a perfect funnel. They twirled higher and higher, taking on the shape of a six-foot-tall tornado. I’d seen plenty of small wind swirls on the ground in my life, but never anything as big as this one.

  The papers suddenly shot straight up into the air and disappeared over the side of the building.

  “That was weird,” Dad said, cocking his head to one side.

  I didn’t say it out loud, but it felt like a sign. Like all of Katie’s pain was vanishing. Like it was actually possible for all of the tormented parts of our lives to be swept away, leaving us with a clean slate to start again.