Sissy

by Jacob Tobia

  Or there was the time when my friend Catherine, who lived in my quad and was also six feet tall, revealed to me that she was a serial thrifter/hoarder and needed to get rid of forty or fifty outfits. She let me come to her room and rummage through a pile of clothes double my own body weight; clothes that actually fit me because we were both six feet and we both had actual rib cages. And I left her room with probably ten new skirts, a BCBG cocktail dress, a vintage pink Lilly Pulitzer shirt, three belts, four pairs of pants, and two vintage fur shawls that hadn’t been worn in over twenty years (I’ve been a vegetarian for a decade and would never purchase original fur, but when two beautiful pieces are either going to the Goodwill or to my own closet and no money is changing hands, I’ll take ’em). I went back to my room and hung up all the clothes and suddenly my closet started to look like I’d always wanted it to.

  Or the time that Nina Davuluri, Miss America 2014 and the first Indian American to ever win the title, came to Duke, and I was invited to a small private dinner with her because I’d made a YouTube reaction video supporting her when a bunch of people said vile racist shit on Twitter after she was crowned. And my friends gathered in the Student Government office to help me squeeze into a borrowed size 2 Hervé Léger cocktail dress for the dinner. It barely fit and I was popping at the seams and kinda couldn’t breathe, but I looked killer and felt beautiful and had never worn a $2,000 dress like that before in my life. And then when I saw Nina, she said, “Is that an Hérve Léger?” and I blushed and said, “Why, yes it is! It’s on loan from a friend,” and I felt smart in every sense of the word.

  Or during spring break, when I ran away to New York City to hang out with my friend Alok and we went to parties together and wrote and performed poetry and I stomped around town in my cute new wardrobe and got to see Janet Mock interview Laverne Cox at NYU and took a selfie with Laverne after the talk and started to grasp just how much I was, in fact, part of the trans community.

  Or when I decided I wanted to start using gender-neutral pronouns everywhere, not just at queer conferences. And I started telling people on campus—professors, students, administrators, everyone—that they shouldn’t call me “he” or “him” anymore, that I wanted to be called “they” and “them.” I felt a new sense of power because I was finally learning to stand up for myself; because I was finally acknowledging that my gender deserves to be accommodated and treated well by other people, even if it requires them to use language and pronouns they aren’t used to.

  Or the time when Sunny and I performed a drag routine to Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga’s rendition of “The Lady Is a Tramp” for Lavender Ball, the annual queer formal. And we started off with me singing Tony’s part in a suit and Sunny singing Gaga’s part in a gown. Then we got naked onstage and by the end I was singing Gaga’s part in a gown and Sunny was singing Tony’s part in a suit.

  Or when Student Affairs had their annual Leadership & Service Awards, the fanciest awards ceremony for undergrads, and I wore the black velvet Bob Mackie gown from Dr. Malouf and won so many diversity and leadership awards that it was kind of embarrassing and pretended I was walking the red carpet at the Emmys and felt gorgeous, albeit sweaty.

  Or on the last day of classes, when we had a big music festival on campus and everyone drank all day and I ran around drunk in a neon pink tutu and bodice with a smaller purple tutu around my neck to round out the look, then met up with Sunny and Ronnie and other friends and we all painted our nails in the common room at the end of the night.

  Or, most memorably, the time Gloria Steinem came to campus and gave a lecture to a standing-room-only crowd at Duke Chapel, and I got up to the mic during the Q&A and asked her what we could do to ensure that sissies like me can be happy, and she threw a power fist in the air and proclaimed, “Sissy!” And as her voice reverberated throughout the church, I threw my power fist up in the air, too, and shouted back, “Sissy, femme, queer and proud of it, dammit!” And for a moment both of our voices echoed together, bouncing off the stone walls, dancing about the gothic cathedral, blending and reverberating until the entire chapel erupted in applause and I felt somehow ordained.

  * * *

  —

  As quickly as it had started, it was over.

  Graduation weekend came before any of us were ready. We turned in our theses, blinked, and presto—we had to get the fuck out. Our tuition money run dry, our grades posted, it was time to go.

  Now that I’m a “proper” lady, I look back at graduation weekend and just think, Oh my God, why did I want everyone to see my underwear all the time? But when I really reflect on my state of mind at the time, it makes sense.

  Let me justify myself. When you are compelled to hold back your gender identity for twenty or thirty years, you have a lot of catching up to do when you finally come around. And it’s awkward for everyone. Oftentimes, when you come out, you go back to being a child. You want to relive your life all over again, reclaim the femme childhood you never got to have, which means you have to learn all the awkward lessons your friends already learned in middle school.

  I didn’t get to cover my whole body in fluffy pink garments as a child, didn’t get to wear the cool Disney Princess–themed hair clips or chronicle my thoughts in a That’s So Raven notebook. I never got to have my Claire’s years. Nor did I get to have my Hot Topic goth-chick phase in high school. I never got to listen to too much Evanescence, strut around in fishnets, paint my nails black, and cover my eyelids in purple glitter. I never got to wear slutty dresses to prom or winter formal and grind with boys to the Black Eyed Peas. I wasn’t given the opportunity to get my scandalousness out of my system in senior year of high school or freshman year of college like many of my ciswomen counterparts.

  Because I’m trans, I had to do all those things as an adult. I’m still kinda cycling through the phases. I mean, I’m twenty-seven and I am just buying my first tube of black lipstick. I bought a pair of Spice Girls–style four-inch platform sneakers just the other day. I’m wondering when I’m going to get to my pretty princess phase, when I’ll dress like Sleeping Beauty on a normal Wednesday. I think it’s coming. It’s unpredictable and erratic, but equally fun and fabulous.

  All this is to say, by the time I graduated college, I was learning fashion lessons and flexing with boundaries that are usually reserved for fifteen-year-old girls—namely, lessons about skirt length.

  I just didn’t get it. How short was too short? Could any slit ever be too high? Did the limit even exist? And why did dresses seem to get shorter when I sat down? Also, how comfortable with my frontal bulge was I really? I’d written a 120-page history thesis, but all I wanted to really explore were the mechanics of pleather miniskirts.

  In my gender rebirth, I cut all my shorts twice as short so that I could show off my legs. I started wearing tiny dresses and skirts that barely covered my thighs when I sat down. I felt glorious and cute and sexy and all the frat boys couldn’t stop staring even though they knew they shouldn’t. One European exchange student even asked me why I didn’t shave my legs, because he thought I had nice legs and should show them off more. And I was annoyed at him for policing my body hair but thrilled that he’d acknowledged some facet of his desire for me.

  I spent most of senior spring in short shorts, miniskirts, and teeny dresses because it was my way of saying fuck you to everyone. You wanna make me feel like an outcast? Well, then you’re going to have to see my leg hair in all its glory. You wanna make me feel like a freak? Well, then I’ll just have to take three inches off all my hemlines. You don’t want me to represent you on the board? No worries. Here’s my ass. Kiss it if you must.

  I don’t think that you have to actually succeed at having a lot of sex in order to be a good slut. These days, sluttiness is more of a political mind-set, a rebellious declaration of sex positivity, than an activity. During graduation weekend, I was at my peak. I used the unruliness of my body, its immodesty and irreveren
ce and lack of discipline, to fight back. I was a dignified social-justice slut who never actually succeeded in getting laid.

  For graduation weekend, I planned five outfits.

  The first was for my final board committee meeting. While I wasn’t elected to serve as Young Trustee, as a vice president in student government, I was a non-voting member of Duke’s Business and Finance Committee. It was a good committee for me to be on while I was working on endowment transparency, because it was the committee with the highest density of very rich people.

  To my final Duke board meeting, I wore a white top, bolero blazer, and black skirt that went down to mid-calf, but had a slit that came up to mid-thigh. I called it my Angelina Jolie skirt because it showed so much leg. I strutted into the board meeting in my heels and confidently sat down next to my fellow committee member Gao Xiqing, the outgoing president and chief investment officer of the China Investment Corporation, China’s sovereign wealth fund, worth around $800 billion at the time. We chatted for a moment before getting down to business. When the meeting ended, I was thanked for my service on the committee and congratulated on my upcoming graduation that weekend. I smiled politely and stood up, revealing the full extent of my skirt to the room. Bet you’re gonna miss these gams, I thought as I strutted out.

  The second outfit was the most dramatic. Not in terms of fashion, but because of the drama that it caused. It was a simple enough BCBG dress with a blue floral pattern. It was still too short, but not as bad as some of my other outfits at the time. I wore it to the graduation celebration that was held for members of my scholarship class and their parents.

  When I walked out of my dorm onto the main quad to meet my mom and dad, their reactions could not have been more different. My mom immediately began tearing up, proud that her baby was graduating and nostalgic for the old days, overcome by the feelings that a mother usually has. My father, on the other hand, broke into a deep, serious scowl. As I hugged my mom, my dad pursed his lips, trying and failing to contain his rage.

  “Is this what you’re wearing?” he spat. “You’re going to wear this?”

  “Yes, this is what I’m planning to wear,” I responded matter-of-factly, with perhaps a touch of snark.

  “I can’t believe this.” His voice was rising. “I can’t frakin’ believe this!”

  Frak is the word my dad uses when he is angry instead of saying “fuck.” For the longest time, I did not know where he picked up this habit. It was just a strange tick he’d developed over time, one that made it really hard for me to take him seriously when he was mad and cursing. I’ve since learned that saying frak instead of fuck is a reference from the hit sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica. Knowing this does not make it any easier to take him seriously when he is mad and cursing.

  “I can’t frakin’ believe this!” He was yelling now. A few students walking by were concerned, but no one stopped.

  Then, “You liar!”

  “When did I lie to you?”

  “I asked you not to wear any of this crap for graduation, I told you that for one weekend I didn’t want any of this San Francisco shit. You promised me that you would just be normal for this weekend and now you’re going back on that frakin’ promise. You liar.”

  I thought back to our recent conversations. I really tried to remember the moment when I’d promised him that I wouldn’t wear a dress for graduation. The conversation when I’d “promised” him had likely gone more like this:

  DAD: You’re not going to wear any of that weird crap to graduation are you?

  ME: What do you mean, “weird crap”?

  DAD: You know, dresses and women’s shoes and that.

  ME: I dunno. I haven’t really thought about it.

  DAD: Well, I want to ask you one thing, as your father. I want you to dress normally for graduation. Please do that for me, okay?

  ME: [nervously, noncommittally, trying to change the topic, but absolutely in no way agreeing to those terms] Okay, we’ll see. Anyway, what do you want to watch on TV?

  According to my father, that constituted a promise. Sometimes, my dad remembers more with emotions than with facts. Sometimes, I remember more with emotions than with facts. Make of that what you will re: this book.

  “I never promised you that, Dad. I wouldn’t’ve. I’ve had my graduation dress picked out for months.”

  “Graduation dress? Jesus, you’re going to wear a dress on Sunday?”

  “That’s my current plan, yes.”

  “I can’t frakin’ believe this.”

  “Look, Dad, it is my graduation, not yours.”

  I might’ve been yelling by this point, too, and my mom was definitely crying angry tears.

  “You didn’t even pay for my college. If you remember, I got a full ride so that you and Mom didn’t have to. So I am going to wear what I want, and if you want to be a part of my graduation weekend, then you’re going to have to deal with that. But you are more than welcome to leave if you’re too uncomfortable. I don’t need you here if you’re just going to be nasty. This is my weekend to celebrate with my friends and you are the only person on campus who is even mad about my dress at this point. I literally just sat next to the president of the fucking Sovereign Wealth Fund of China in a skirt and he couldn’t’ve cared less. Everyone else here thinks I’m fabulous, Dad. From Dee, my friend who’s a custodian in the library, to the provost. Perhaps you could join them?”

  I paused for effect as my father fumed.

  “Now, if you’re done having a fit about this, we are late to the celebration for my two hundred thousand dollar scholarship. You can come or not, Dad. Your choice.”

  He didn’t respond, glaring angrily, then proceeded to do the most awkward thing he possibly could’ve. He went to the reception, but refused to walk beside me and my mom, instead trailing a few paces behind us. Then he refused to talk to me or acknowledge my existence at a reception filled with parents gushing about their kids. They had an official photographer at the event and my dad wouldn’t even take a professional photo with my mom and me.

  By this point in my life, I’d gotten used to how my dad’s temper worked, which is that he gets really, really mad for a period of a few hours, gives you the silent treatment for a day or two, and then goes back to being generally kinda sweet. So I wasn’t devastated by the fact that he wouldn’t be seen with me at my own reception. It made me look courageous, or perhaps gracious, and just made him look like a profound, insufferable asshole.

  But let me defend him for just a second. First off, for my graduation trip, my dad took the entire family to San Francisco, a city that is, to him, the gayest in the world. So it’s not like he was opposed to every facet of my identity or anything. I mean we wandered around the Castro together for like three hours the very next week.*

  And while he may have been a jerk on graduation weekend, he was climbing a fairly steep hill. Not only was I making him be seen in public with me in a dress for the first time, I was making him be seen in public with me in a slutty dress, which was fabulously too short and might’ve shown a bit of bulge at the right angle, for the first time.

  It was truly a double whammy, because we were combining a big cis-father/trans-child fight with a separate, more classic fight that most girls have with their parents at the age of fourteen: the “you can’t go out in that skirt, it’s too short” fight. So I was having my gender-affirmation and my sex-positive-femininity fight with my dad at the same time.

  Dad, I’m gender nonconforming and you have to get used to it. And I’m also kinda slutty and you have to get used to that, too. Now come to the ceremony—I’m graduating summa cum laude with distinction!

  I like to think of this as efficiency. Why have two small fights when you can just have one really big one?

  My baccalaureate service in Duke Chapel the next day was easier. My outfit involved a pair of bright vermilion shorts, r
ed lipstick, a kinky glitter vinyl bow tie made by my friend,* and brown leather espadrilles. For some reason, inexplicably, my dad can deal with heels, especially wedges. He can even kind of deal with lipstick and makeup. It’s just the dresses and skirts that drive him over the edge. Day two of graduation weekend passed without incident.

  The next day was the big one. While I didn’t get to speak at graduation, I did get to sing as part of the octet that performed the National Anthem and the Alma Mater. So I had to get up early that morning to head to rehearsal and line up under the stadium for our procession onto the stage. Groggy but buzzing with anticipation, I put on my fourth and arguably most iconic graduation weekend outfit: the Jackie Kennedy–inspired bright pink skirt suit that just barely covered my underwear, my navy blue Hillary Clinton pumps from my time at the UN, and a pearl-lined navy pillbox hat that would’ve made even Kate Middleton jealous. I looked incredible, perfectly representing Duke by adeptly straddling sluttiness and refinement.

  Strutting around campus the day of graduation was a whirlwind and, in a way, my first taste of celebrity. Parents, my classmates, and administrators alike couldn’t stop staring at me, not only because my outfit was impeccable and outlandish in equal parts, but because most of them, parents and siblings included, already knew who I was. I’d begun the (self-aggrandizing, delusional) transition from student to legend.

  Have you heard the story of Jacob? They were a student here once. Legend has it that their legs were five feet tall. They once sent an administrator to the hospital because their skirt was so short.

  Sitting onstage at graduation, staring out across the thousands of students and parents gathered before me in Wallace Wade Stadium, sweating my face off, a more heroic narrative began to dawn on me. I hadn’t just survived this place, I’d demanded and maintained my right to exist. I hadn’t let Duke crush me or walk all over me. If anything, I’d done my damnedest to walk all over Duke.