“You know what?” I tell him. “Fuck you. You act like you’re better than everyone else, but you’re nothing but a fucking fraud.”
Ezra’s shaking his head, like he’s annoyed with me, as if he thinks I’m overreacting even though he knows that Declan is being an asshole. Leah and Marisol awkwardly stand to the side, glancing at Declan to see what he’ll do or say next.
Declan clenches his jaw. “I’m the fraud? Really?”
Ezra points at Declan. “No. Don’t go there.”
Declan rolls his eyes. “Christ. That’s not even what I meant.”
But the insinuation is there—implication made. It sours the air. Declan lets out this heavy sigh, not bothering to look at me, and out of the countless fights I’ve had with Declan Keane, I know I’ve won this particular battle. Even if his last words are still twisting through my gut. I’ve won, and in any other circumstance, I’d be happy to stay here and bask in the glory—but Marisol and Leah are staring anywhere but at me, and Ezra has these worried-filled eyes, and I know he’ll whisper, “Are you okay?” every five minutes if I stay.
I drop the reflector. “Forget it.”
I’m halfway down the stairs when Declan says that he isn’t surprised. That’s the kind of crap I always pull. I just flip him off and keep going.
Two
THE TRIP FROM UNION SQUARE ISN’T AS BAD AS FROM BED-STUY, but it’s still about an hour before I get off at the 145th stop in Harlem. I’ve only been living here half a year. My dad and I used to live pretty close to where Ezra is now, on Tompkins. I miss the hell out of Brooklyn, but our landlord raised the rent, and my dad just couldn’t afford it. He works most weeknights as a doorman for a luxury condominium in Lower Manhattan, and some days he’ll try to take up extra jobs, like making deliveries and walking dogs. I’m on a talent-based scholarship, and even then, all his money goes into me and St. Catherine’s—just so that I can pursue my passion for art. The pressure to get better grades, to pull off an amazing portfolio and college application, to make all the sacrifices worth it and actually get into Brown . . . it can fill me up sometimes, to the point where it’s hard to even breathe.
Dad tells me not to worry. “Besides,” he said, “I’ve always wanted to live in Harlem.” I don’t know if he’s just lying to cheer me up, but there’s definitely something exciting about this neighborhood. Langston Hughes and Claude McKay and all the other Black queer poets of the Renaissance made their art way up here. Maybe being in Harlem will snap me out of whatever the hell this creative block is and inspire me to put together an amazing Brown University application and portfolio—strong enough not only to get in but to get that full-ride scholarship, too. God, how incredible would that be? Getting into Brown would be like giving a giant middle finger to the Declan Keanes of the world—the people who take one look at me and decide I’m just not good enough.
I put in my earbuds and pop Fleetwood Mac into my Spotify station as I head down the steep hill, passing the park I avoid at all costs, ever since a rat tried to climb up my leg as I cut through the grass one night. I pass the Starbucks—the ultimate sign of gentrification in any neighborhood—and the Dollar Tree, the gym, and the fruit stand on the sidewalk. There are lemons, grapes, strawberries, and the brightest mangoes I’ve ever seen. They look like miniature suns. I pull out my phone and snap a photo for Instagram, even though I wouldn’t really classify myself as a #foodporn kind of guy.
The seller glares at me. “You buying anything?”
I shrug. “No?”
“Then get the fuck out of here.”
I walk up the block, by the Chinese restaurant and the KFC, kids on bikes popping up onto their back wheel and whooping down the street, fire truck sirens blaring a few blocks off, a shirtless man walking his Shih Tzu without a leash. The building my dad managed to get us into is all red brick with a courtyard where a few guys are sitting around on the ramp’s railings. I pass by into the lobby with brown tiles and potted plants in the corners, a girl chatting on her cell phone by the stairs. The elevator takes me up to the fifth floor, and after walking down the hallway that reminds me of The Shining, I unlock the door and let myself in.
“I’m home!” I call out, not sure if my dad’s even here. Captain, who must’ve heard me coming down the hall, is waiting by the door. She immediately rubs against my leg, back arching and purring, tail flicking back and forth. I’d found her as a kitten in Brooklyn one winter day when I was walking to my Bed-Stuy apartment with Ezra, and I was afraid that she’d die if I didn’t help her, so I brought her home. My dad was pissed, but he let me warm her up and feed her milk, and one day turned into a few days, which turned into a few weeks, and after a few months, my dad had to admit that he liked her, too. I bend over to pick Captain up, but she’s gone in a flash, bolting away from me and toward the kitchen.
The apartment is smaller than what we had in Bed-Stuy. The walls are beige, the light brown hardwood floors scuffed and worn down, an AC unit stuck into the living room’s only window. This is a one-bedroom apartment, technically, but there’s a tiny, windowless den that’s supposed to be an office space and has now become my room. It’s just big enough for my twin-sized mattress, one side table, and a dresser pressed up against the wall. I told my dad that I felt like Harry Potter, sleeping in the cupboard under the staircase. I was just joking, but I felt bad the second I said it. My dad’s really effing trying, I know that he is—and complaining about my new room, when he’s been working his ass off for me and my school, wasn’t exactly my shining moment.
The wooden floor squeaks on my way into the kitchen, where I see a container from Jacob’s, the cheapest and most delicious takeout around: beef stew, peas and rice, plantains, and baked macaroni and cheese. Dad’s home, then—not surprising, since he’ll have to leave for work in a few hours. My dad’s always been the kind of person to have odd jobs. He told me once that his passion isn’t work—it’s his family. He would’ve been totally happy as a stay-at-home dad. Mom worked as a nurse at the hospital, bringing home the bacon, I guess—but when she left, everything fell apart. Now my dad’s fighting to send me to a private school filled with rich kids, just so that I can live my dream and have a chance to go to an Ivy League school, all while pretending we aren’t struggling to stay afloat. Declan Keane’s voice echoes in my head. I’m the real fraud. What sucks is that he’s kind of right.
I get comfortable in the living room, toeing off my sneakers and grabbing my laptop from the coffee table, sprawling out on the comfy couch. I end up where I always do: my email drafts folder.
I’ve got 472 emails drafted. All of them are to the same person: Lorraine Anders. Her last name, after she went and divorced my dad and changed it from Love.
I click on compose to write a new message and type hi again into the subject line.
Hey Mom,
This is the 473rd email I have drafted to you.
That’s . . . a lot.
Is this kind of weird? Would you think I’m a freak, writing you all these unsent messages for years and hoarding them in my drafts folder?
I’m not going to send this one to you either. I already know that I won’t. But maybe, one day, I can get the courage to actually write you an email that I hope you’ll read and wait by my laptop, constantly refreshing my Gmail to see if you’ll respond. I don’t even know what that email would say. How’re you? How’s Florida? How’s my stepsister and my stepdad? Do you ever think about me? Do you still love me?
Anyway, you know I just started the summer program and I had a group project. Long story short, Declan Keane was there. I’ve told you about him before. He pissed me off, like he always does. But—get this—Ezra was angry at me for fighting with Declan. I mean, what the hell? Marisol was also there. I’m so awkward whenever she’s around, and I wish I could figure out a way to . . . I don’t know, make her see that she was wrong about me. I know that I can’t make anyone do anything, but it still really sucks whenever she just ignores me or acts like she doe
sn’t give a shit about me and my existence. It makes me feel . . . well, I guess a little like how you make me feel. Except you’re 10,000x worse. Because you’re, well, my mom.
Okay, enough self-pity for the day. Maybe one day I’ll actually go through and click send on every single one of these messages just to flood your inbox. But until then . . .
Your son,
Felix
The bedroom door opens, and my dad walks out, bleary-eyed. I snap my laptop shut. I realize this makes me look like I was watching porn or something, but my dad doesn’t notice. He’s got on his white collared shirt and tie, jacket hung over his arm. His gray hair is balding, and his frame seems to get thinner every year.
“Hey, kid,” he says, since he still has a hard time saying my name.
My dad and I haven’t seen each other in three days. The program is basically an away summer camp, but set in the city instead of in the woods. Most of the other students stay on campus in the dorms “for an immersive creative experience,” as St. Catherine’s likes to say, and since classes are right down the street from Ezra’s apartment, I try to stay with him as much as possible. My dad, however, said that he wants me here, with him. I argued that it’s important for me to gain life skills before college and get used to the idea of living on my own, which was only half bullshit, so we agreed on a compromise: I’d spend some days with Ezra, and some days at home. Basically, I’ve been living the dream. Not many teens get a chance to actually live without adults before college.
“You grabbed any food yet?” my dad asks me as he walks over to the plastic takeout container.
“Nope,” I say, opening my laptop again and jumping onto Instagram to see how many likes my #foodporn post of the mangoes got. Two so far: one from Ezra, the other from Ezra’s fake account.
“How’re things?” my dad asks, mouth full of macaroni and cheese. “How’s Ezra? You’ve been eating well and going to bed at a reasonable time and doing your work and everything?” I hesitate. I don’t think he’d want to know that we’ve been staying up until three every morning, smoking weed, or that I’m still struggling to get my shit together. He keeps going. “I’m trusting you to be responsible. You know that, right?” Then—“Ah, shit—God damnit, the cat pissed everywhere again.”
I help him grab paper towels to sop up the mess while he mutters something about needing to take Captain to the vet, and I say Captain’s probably just anxious. She’s never liked this new space—we can’t open the only window, and there’s no balcony, no fire escape, nowhere to sit outside. I understand. I feel pretty trapped in this apartment, too.
My dad points at the roll of paper towels in my hands and says my name to get my attention—but not my real name. He says my old name. The one I was born with, the one he and my mom gave me. The name itself I don’t mind that much, I guess—but hearing it said out loud, directed at me, always sends a stabbing pain through my chest, this sinking feeling in my gut. I pretend I didn’t hear him, until my dad realizes his mistake. There’s an awkward silence for a few seconds, before he mumbles a quick apology.
We never talk about it. How he doesn’t like saying the name Felix out loud. How he’ll always slip up and use the wrong pronouns, and not bother to correct himself. How some nights, when he’s had a little too much whiskey or beer, he’ll tell me that I’ll always be his daughter, his little girl.
I put the paper towel down and take the ten steps into my bedroom, closing the door behind me with a soft click.
“Kid,” I hear my dad call, but I ignore him as I lie down on my bed, staring up at the flickering lightbulb. Captain appears out of nowhere, hopping into my lap and brushing her head against my hand, and I try not to cry, because no matter how pissed I am at him, I don’t want my dad to hear me.
I wait outside of Ezra’s gray, steel, and glass apartment building, sunglasses on to save my eyes from the bright summer light. It’s seven, and the air still has that early-morning chill. Ez comes bounding down the stairs and out the front door, shades also on. I kind of hate how predictable we are right now.
“What’s wrong with you?” Ezra immediately says. His hair is down, but it doesn’t look like he bothered putting a comb through it, so tangled curls flop into his eyes. Ezra can always tell when I’m pissed or upset. He says that he’s an empath. I think he’s full of shit.
“Nothing.” He keeps staring at me as we walk, waiting, so I say, “It’s just my dad. He deadnamed me again.”
“Shit,” Ez mutters. “I’m sorry.”
I shrug, because while I want to say it’s okay, it really isn’t. Some trans folks have always known exactly who they are, declaring their correct gender and pronouns as toddlers and insisting that they be given different clothes and toys. But it took me a while to figure out my identity. I’d always hated being forced into dresses and being given dolls. The dresses and dolls weren’t even the real issue. The real issue was me realizing that these were things society had assigned to girls, and while I didn’t even know what trans was, something about being forced into the role of girl has always upset the hell out of me. I’d always tried to line up with the other boys whenever teachers split us up. I followed those boys around the playgrounds, upset that they’d ignore me and push me away. I had dreams, sometimes—dreams where I’d be in a different body, the kind of body society says belongs to men. I’d be so effing happy, but then I would wake up and see that nothing had changed. I remember thinking to myself, Hopefully, if I’m reincarnated, I’ll be born a boy.
It wasn’t until I was twelve, almost five years ago now, that I read this book that had a trans character in it: I Am J by Cris Beam. Reading about J, it was like . . . I don’t know, not only did a lightbulb go off in me, but the sun itself came out from behind these eternal clouds, and everything inside me blazed with the realization: I’m a guy.
I’m a freaking guy.
It took me a few months of flipping out and going back and forth over whether I was really trans or not. Another few months to figure out how to tell my parents. I sat my dad down in the living room of our old Bed-Stuy apartment. I felt like I was going to throw up the entire time, and I was so nervous that the only words I could get out were, “Dad, I have something to tell you,” and, “I’m trans.” He was quiet. He had this expression, like he was confused. And then he said, “Okay.” But I could tell it wasn’t okay, not to him—could tell the whole coming out thing wasn’t going so well. He said he was tired and went to bed, and that was the end of the conversation. I emailed my mom the next day, since she’s lived in Florida with my stepdad and my stepsister since I’ve been ten years old. She never responded. It was the first and last time I actually hit send on an email I wrote her.
It was almost an entire year of begging before my dad agreed to let me see a doctor for hormones. It isn’t always easy to start hormones, so I’m lucky that I could. That was around the time I started to show I was really talented in art and he decided to send me to St. Catherine’s, which was great, because I didn’t have to be around people who knew the old me. I didn’t have any friends at my former school anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal. It took a lot of convincing, and my doctor’s help, but almost a year ago now, my dad even helped me get top surgery. I know how lucky I am for that. Not everyone who wants surgery can afford it. My dad had to do a lot of paperwork with letters and providers and everything, and he had to figure out my health insurance to make it happen. Even then, he still had to pay some money out of pocket. No matter how much he pisses me off sometimes, I wouldn’t have been able to start my physical transition without my dad. Maybe that’s what’s most confusing of all: Why would he pay for my hormones, my surgery, my doctor’s visits, everything—but refuse to say my real name?
Ezra met me right at the beginning of my transition. We sat next to each other in class and gravitated to each other’s sarcastic comments, until we found ourselves spending practically every second of every day together. Ezra has only ever known me as Felix. I haven’t told him,
or anyone else, my old name. I’ve tried to wipe out all evidence of my past life: photos or videos where I have long hair, or where I’m wearing dresses, or anything society’s prescribed to girls. It just isn’t who I am anymore—who I ever was. It’s funny. In a way, I guess I did experience reincarnation. I’ve started a new life, in a new physical form. I got exactly what I’d wished for.
My dad asked me to keep a few of my old pictures—for the memories, you never know if you’ll want to remember who you used to be one of these days. It wasn’t really for me. I could tell he wanted those pictures for himself, one last anchor to who he thinks I was, or who he thinks I still am, which is enough of a reason for me to want to delete each and every single one of them. I have the pictures stored on Instagram, and I’ve come pretty close to deleting the photos a few times. I get a lurch of nausea whenever I see the old me pop up in my gallery. But I still keep the pictures. It’s weird. He pisses me off, but he’s still my dad, and I shouldn’t feel like I owe him anything for helping me with my transition, but I do. I guess I figured it doesn’t really matter. I’ve hidden the photos from the public. Only I can access them anyway. It doesn’t really hurt to keep them around until my dad can finally accept me for who I am.
But . . . Even after coming out, even after starting my transition, sometimes I get this feeling. The feeling that something still isn’t right. Questions float to the surface. Those questions begin to pull on this thread of anxiety, and I’m afraid if I pull too hard, I’ll unweave and become completely undone. Maybe that’s why I hate my dad deadnaming me, more than anything else. It makes me wonder if I really am Felix, no matter how loud I shout that name.
Three
THE WALK TO ST. CATHERINE’S FROM EZRA’S PLACE IS pretty short. We step over cracks and dog shit on the sidewalk as we pass the basketball and tennis courts and the park, guys doing pull-ups on the monkey bars and little kids chasing each other and squealing as their moms sit and watch. There’s a new wood-paneled coffee shop on the corner—not quite a Starbucks, but all signs point to gentrification. I glance at Ezra. He might not be white, but he still has a million-dollar apartment down the street. And what about me? Even if we’re poor as fuck, my dad and I are basically doing the same thing by moving to Harlem, aren’t we?
Felix Ever After Page 2
