I Am J

by Cris Beam

“I think she wanted to talk to Karyn, but she wasn’t home,” Melissa said, sitting up. “I told her about the dance performance, and I invited her. It’s in two weeks. J—”

  “Yeah?” He was about to go into the bathroom to change into sweats, for bed.

  “At the performance space, where the dance is going to be, there’s this long hallway, and Becky and me—we wanted to have some visual art there.” Melissa looked at J, long enough to make him uncomfortable. “I told her my best friend was an amazing photographer, so we booked you for that space.”

  “Emmmm!”

  “What, J? You can put it on your résumé that you’ve had a gallery show in New York.” She put on her defiant face, with the pouty lips and the flared nostrils.

  “I don’t have a résumé,” he said. He hated Melissa’s pretensions. “Unlike you, I’m not trying to pretend like I’m thirty-five when I’m eighteen. And it’s not a gallery. It’s just some warehouse place your friend rented for a night.”

  J could see the sting register in Melissa’s eyes, but she didn’t rise to the bait. “Unlike you, I’m trying to make something of my art,” she said. “And, unlike you, I think about more than just myself and my gender. I think about my friends, and I try to help them out.”

  “Fuck you, Melissa.”

  “Fuck you, too.”

  J went into the bathroom and washed his face. How did everything with Melissa deteriorate so quickly into a fight? They were like an old married couple, knowing each other’s wounds so well, knowing just where to press. How dare she say he didn’t think about his friends? He’d helped Melissa so many times. Just today, he’d taken pictures of Zak for his website. And he was forever listening to Chanelle blather on about Bonez, whom she hadn’t even broken up with yet. He brushed his teeth.

  Maybe he could hang some pictures at the performance; it wasn’t like people would have to know they were his. And he already had three frames, from his birthday. The problem was getting the pictures—all of his good ones were back at his old apartment, and the new series was just an idea. He spit toothpaste into the sink.

  The room was dark when J came out, and he could see that Melissa was under the covers. J unzipped his bag and climbed in, turning from one side to the other, trying to find a comfortable position.

  “Melis?”

  “Yeah?” She obviously hadn’t been sleeping.

  “How many pictures would I need to have?”

  “Five,” she said. “Well, maybe four, but five would be better.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” she said. J could hear the grin in her voice. “ ’Night, J.”

  “ ’Night.”

  J called Carolina on his way to school the next morning.

  “Hi, m’ija,” she said, a little too brightly. “Melissa told me you’re showing your photos in a gallery?”

  Oh, God, J thought. “It’s not a gallery, Mami. It’s just a dance Melissa and her friends are doing. And I’m gonna put up some pictures.”

  “That’s good, Jay-jay. You can put that on your college applications.”

  J hadn’t thought of that. Carolina asked when the show would be, and J’s throat constricted. Through the night, he’d been considering the photos he had stored in his camera, most of which he wouldn’t want his mother to see. He considered hanging up, feigning a bad connection.

  “Two weeks from today. Friday,” he said.

  “Oh, J, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” her voice suddenly wavery. “That’s the night of your father’s and my anniversary—remember?”

  J didn’t. He didn’t have a calendar to write down important dates, mostly because he didn’t have any. Still, his stomach sank. How would he explain this to Melissa? He couldn’t miss her performance; she’d already accused him of being a bad friend.

  “We decided to make it smaller. It’s not a big party, just a small party, just our close friends who really know us. We don’t want to spend the money.” Carolina always said too much when she was nervous, filling up every corner of space with words. “And it’s going to be kind of an adult party. I mean, there’ll be alcohol there.”

  Since when had alcohol been a problem? There had been beer and wine at every barbecue, birthday, wedding, and quinceañera J had attended with his parents since he was two years old.

  “Where are you having it?” J asked. He bent to tie his shoe. A gust of wind hit J’s face, and he watched a candy wrapper scuttle across the sidewalk.

  “At Martino’s. We’re reserving the back room.”

  It wouldn’t be the best place for taking pictures; Martino’s had fluorescent lighting and no windows in the back. “Maybe we can bring some lamps from home,” J suggested.

  “What?”

  “For the pictures.”

  “Oh, Jellybean, I don’t want you to worry about the pictures. I’m looking so old, anyway, and your father’s gotten so fat, and you have Melissa’s dance that night—”

  J interrupted. “You don’t want me to take pictures? At your anniversary?”

  “It’s not that, J.” Carolina paused. “It’s just going to be an adult party. It won’t be fun for you, anyway. And you have your other photography event; you have to go to that, J.”

  “Okay, Mami,” J said. He got it. “I’m at school now. Talk to you later.”

  They don’t want me there. J hung up the phone and shoved it in his back pocket. He wasn’t at school; he’d started walking in the opposite direction as soon as his mother mentioned the back room at Martino’s. They’re embarrassed of me. Oddly, this realization didn’t make J mad, just more resigned to what he already knew. His mother had been protecting Manny for months now, speaking for him, and protecting J, as well, from whatever Manny thought of him. How long could she last, sandwiched as she was between them?

  J stopped in a deli and bought a coffee. It was too hot, but the burning soothed him. It let him focus on his tongue for a moment, and the numbness that spread after the first shocking sip. It would be like that with Manny after a while, too; J would grow cold to his father’s disdain, J’s emotional sensors thickening until there was nothing more to feel.

  J imagined Carolina and Manny talking about the party. Without him around, they wouldn’t have to close their door. His mother would be crying, begging Manny to let J come. “It’s our anniversary,” she’d say, tears in her eyes. “And J’s our only child.” The dishrag in her hand would be twisted into a soggy knot. In his mind, his mother looked like a soap-opera character he remembered—the wayward nun, clumpy mascara streaking her face, pleading for mercy.

  Manny would slam his hand on the bureau, making the loose change jump. “Cari, no!” he’d say. Manny looked like Manny, only bigger, his face splotchy with rage. “If J wants to run away and then act the fool, let her do it on her own dime. I’m not taking responsibility anymore.” As J imagined the scene unfolding, his father’s words grew more clear and realistic. How many times had he called J a fool in the past?

  “But what will we tell J?” In J’s imagination, his mother was whimpering from the bed. “And what will our friends think if she’s not there?” Manny grabbed his keys and turned to leave, just as J had seen him do countless times before. “I don’t care what you tell her, Cari. She’s your daughter now.”

  J knew this scene was made up, but it seemed so plausible and rang so true that he could barely light a cigarette. His hands shook, and the lighter sputtered before the flame finally caught and J could take a long, calming drag. It’s just your own messed-up head, J told himself. You don’t know what he really thinks.

  J knew he shouldn’t indulge in this abandonment illusion for long. He had to clear his mind for something more important: the clinic had called. They were ready to give him his testosterone shot.

  J was scared. So scared, he’d even told Melissa. And Chanelle. And a few guys at the group the other night. After all the buildup over T, J couldn’t believe it was actually going to happen. The guys at the group
congratulated him, and Melissa and Chanelle each asked if he wanted them to go with him to his appointment, but he’d said no: this was something a man had to do alone, like running away, or like—well, like what? There really was nothing like it. It felt momentous and impending, an ending to something, and a beginning. What was it that astronaut had said? One small step for man, one giant step for mankind? Something like that.

  Plenty of people had done this before, J knew, so why was he so afraid? As soon as he’d brought it up in the group, he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It was the same way with Philip, who said taking testosterone would feel like going through a second puberty. It would be slow, oily, with pimples and emotions, sexual urges, and a new, curious relationship to his body. Talking about it made him queasy, so with Philip he’d changed the subject. The doctor had talked about the psychological responses, too. He told J that everyone reacted to testosterone differently: some people did feel more aggressive with the hormones, but some felt more at peace—calmer than before—and others didn’t notice any difference at all.

  But everybody got the voice. The voice that squeaked at first, like the tentative turning of a rusty bike, but then loosened and tumbled into the darker timbre that J craved. With a new voice, J wouldn’t have to answer in single-syllable murmurs, his chin bowed down toward his chest; he would be marked unmistakably “male” as soon as he ordered a slice of pizza or called a stranger on the phone.

  J felt as if he were at the edge of one of his construction sites, staring at the deep hole in the earth that always came before the building. People forgot about the excavation once the building went up, once the shiny windows and elevators and rooftop terraces made the edifice seem so permanent, so entitled to its height and stature. But beneath the building was still the deep cut in the land that allowed for its growth, the hollow space that was once mulchy and dense. And where did all that dirt go, once it had been dug up and hauled away? J didn’t know.

  The thing about testosterone, J realized, was there was no turning back. The doctor had told him that some things would revert if he ever decided to stop taking T; his ovaries would function, he’d get periods again, and if he gained weight, he’d gain it like a girl. The voice, though, that would stay low forever. But J wasn’t really worried about the physical changes. It was deeper than that. Despite what his mother or father wished, despite what his friends thought of him, despite being barely old enough to vote or buy cigarettes, despite his own brain convulsing at times with confusion, here he was: making a change dictated entirely by his suffering. It felt like a matter of life or death. But if this suffering turned on him later, well, the change would have already set in his soul. Psychically speaking, he couldn’t just knock down the building, find the hole, and fill himself back up with dirt. There would always be a scar.

  Describe an event that changed your life, he thought, remembering the essay question from the stack of college applications that sat on Melissa’s kitchen table. He resolved to write his essay before Thursday after next—before the scheduled injection.

  There were some other things, too, that J wanted to clean up before he took his first T. Like that day in the pet store with Blue. Testosterone, in his mind, was becoming like a spiritual rite. He wanted to be pure for it, and his experience with Blue was anything but pure.

  He had lied to Blue—that much was clear. He had lied about the poem and where he came from. Even the necklace wasn’t a present he’d picked out, the way he’d led her to believe. J wasn’t sure if he loved Blue or if he loved the way she saw him—as a male named Jason (it was Jason, wasn’t it?), a heterosexual, normal guy, whatever that was.

  The guys in the transgender group called it “disclosing,” and they all had lots of opinions about it. Some felt as Chanelle did—with straight girls, they thought, the less you said, the better. Others, like Zak, thought you should “disclose your status” right away, to avoid more pain later. J didn’t know where he stood.

  The phone rang three times before Blue picked up.

  “ ’Sup?” J tried to sound equal parts friendly and disinterested.

  “Nothing. I’m just painting. Wassup with you?”

  It was lunchtime on a school day. J had expected Blue’s voice mail. “You skipping school?”

  Blue said it was her sister’s birthday, so she was outside Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, painting her a card.

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “Freezing.”

  “Wait for me. I’ll be there in a few.”

  Blue was crouched on the steps in front of the church, squinting up at the Gothic towers, when J padded up behind her. She clutched a postcard-size canvas in her left hand and had a paintbrush in her teeth. Cute, J thought. Always so damn cute.

  J handed her a cappuccino. “Looks good,” he said.

  Blue jumped, startled. When she’d given him a (brief, stiff) hug and regained her composure, she took a long, grateful drink of the cappuccino and held her painting out at arm’s length. There was one tower, all in watery blues, reaching toward a strip of sky. The topmost point was sharp, but the lower spires and the triangular windows were twisted—tangling, almost—in their effort to reach the apex.

  “I know it’s not realistic,” Blue said, cocking her head, “but I think Jadzia will recognize it.”

  “No monsters in this one?” J lit a cigarette, and Blue took it from him, pulling a long, thoughtful inhale.

  “Not for Jadzia. She doesn’t have any demons.”

  J wondered how deep the foundation was for this cathedral; it had to be more than thirty stories high. “How old is this church?”

  “Dunno.” Blue nodded at the bunch of tourists knotted at the entrance. “Want to go in?”

  J shook his head. It had been years since he’d been in a church. First Communion had been his mother’s idea, and something Manny tolerated. After that, J went occasionally with Carolina, but by the time he was ten, both he and his mother had pretty much given up. As far as he knew, his father hadn’t been in a church since his own wedding day; and he never went to temple. Apparently, he’d even begged out of J’s christening and just showed up for the party.

  J didn’t want to go inside because of the guilt that was already percolating pretty strongly beneath his rib cage; big, vaulted sanctuaries tended to exacerbate that feeling. He’d deceived Blue, made her think that he was angry with her, when he was really just tumbling around inside his own pain. He’d ignored her and then begged her back, hoping to win a double date with her for Chanelle. And here she was, sweetly painting a watercolor for her sister. The last time he saw her paint, all he could think about was getting busy with her. And his hormones. Those ever-present hormones. Had he ever really looked at Blue before? Had he ever looked at anyone?

  “Blue, I haven’t been totally straight with you.” Blue was shaking her paper cup in slow circles to blend the foam into the coffee. She gazed at the cup as though it required her entire attention. “That necklace—I didn’t buy it for you. I mean, it was mine. It came from my tía Yola.”

  “You stole the necklace from your aunt?”

  “I didn’t steal it! She gave it to me. For my First Communion.”

  “Whoa,” Blue said. “Understanding aunt. That necklace was pretty girly.”

  J narrowed his eyes in confusion, but Blue continued. “I haven’t been totally honest with you, either.”

  J reached into his pocket for a smoke, but the pack was empty. He gestured for her to continue.

  “I followed you to your school one day. I know where you go.”

  J sat down hard on the cement step. This he wasn’t expecting. But then he remembered having seen flashes of blue one day when he walked to school; he hadn’t been imagining things. “So, you know about me.”

  Blue nodded her assent, but J couldn’t see her. He was staring at his hands. When he spoke again, his voice came out lower, darker than usual. “Why’d you do that?”

  Blue sat down next to
him. “Because, J, I didn’t know what to do. Every day it was like you were a different person. One day warm, the next day cold, the next day missing,” she said. “Then I understood. You had a secret.”

  “It’s not a secret!” J kicked over Blue’s now-empty cup. Calling it a secret made it seem bad, dirty, something to hide. When here he was—he’d risked everything—his parents, his home, his best friend, his school—to live the life that was coursing through his blood. “You’re the one who kept a secret! Following me around like a spy. Damn.”

  “You’re right, J. I’m sorry.” Blue quickly tried to touch J’s knee but then pulled her hand back just as fast. “But how is it not a secret if you never told me you were gay? When you were kissing me and everything?”

  J looked at her, astonished. “What?” Now he was really pissed. “Gay is different from trans!”

  “What are you talking about, trans? Trans what?” Blue’s tone, for once, seemed to be ratcheting up as quickly as J’s.

  J knew that people scrambled gay and transgender all the time; they thought that every lesbian wanted to be a man and that every gay boy wore dresses. But Blue was too smart for that. J didn’t like being thought of as gay; it reminded him of the time everyone thought he was a lesbian. He was a boy, and if he was a boy, he was straight. Well, queer. But queer-straight. Or whatever.

  J got up to throw Blue’s coffee cup into the trash can. This talk was supposed to clear the air between them; he didn’t want to be angry at her. But he didn’t want to educate her, either; he’d already done plenty of that with his mother and Melissa. And he was sure there would be others down the line. When he turned back, Blue was scowling.

  “What do you mean, trans?” she asked again.

  “Transgender.” Is she playing me? J thought.

  “You mean you’re really a girl?”

  “Born that way.”

  Blue’s jaw dropped. J closed it for her with one gloved finger, but she didn’t look at him, just stared off at some indistinct spot in the horizon. “Like that god,” she said softly.