by Rachel Gold
My body got up without me and walked down to her. I thought I was still sitting in my seat, shaking, but the preprogrammed part that played her boyfriend day-to-day knew what to do at a time like this.
/run: protect girlfriend
1. square shoulders and jaw
2. tell self: I am a guy!
3. repeat 2, if having feelings, go to 4
4. identify feelings
5. crush feelings into a tiny mass
6. lodge mass behind breastbone
7. repeat 2
My hand reached for Claire’s shoulder. She stopped fighting and threw herself at me crying. Well, at least one of us gets to cry, I thought.
“Both of you, principal’s office now!” Mr. Cooper shouted. He really was a lot taller than me when he stood up straight like that.
He closed his hand around Jason’s arm and propelled him through the door into the hall. Claire followed, and I went with her.
Chapter Thirteen
In the hall outside the classroom, Mr. Cooper glanced at me. “You can come too,” he said in a normal tone as he shifted his grip on Jason’s arm and marshaled us all toward the end of the hall.
I ended up in the waiting area outside the principal’s office with Jason while Mr. Cooper dragged Claire in to explain why she’d chucked her book at Jason. His eye was darkening where the corner of the book had hit it. An inch shorter than me, he was also at least an inch wider. Okay, I told myself, time for an Oscar-winning performance playing guy-to-guy conversation to make sure Claire would be okay around him and the other football lunks.
Sprawled into the seat jock-style, I looked over at him. “Man, that’s gonna be a shiner.”
He touched it with his fingertips. “I’ve had worse.”
“No shit,” I said. “Sorry she went apeshit on you. She gets crazy sometimes. You know, girl stuff.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “Look, she may be a little nutty, but she’s my girl, so if you’re going to take it out on someone, come find me, okay?”
“Hey, I wouldn’t hit a girl anyway,” he said. “I just don’t want a fucking suspension. Then I might come kick your ass.” He was grinning as he said it, so I grinned back. He made a fist and slammed it into my shoulder. It hurt enough that I knew I’d have a good bruise, but things could have been so much worse that I didn’t care.
“We’re cool,” he said. “As long as you keep her the hell away from me.”
I nodded, trying to figure out if I was supposed to say something else. The principal’s office door opened and Claire came out while Mr. Cooper waved Jason in.
Claire kept walking out of the administrative office, so I followed her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“What? Did you—?” My blood froze.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t tell them anything. Can you drive me home?”
I was going to miss English again, but I’d survive. The teacher loved me, and I’d already done the homework for this month. “Yeah, what happened?”
“I’m suspended for a week.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah.”
I caught up to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “You gave him a black eye, you know.”
She shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit him in the face. I was aiming for his shoulder. I hate to hurt anyone, but he was such a jackass.” Her lips quivered and she pressed them together before saying more. “I told the principal and Mr. Cooper that I have a cousin who’s trans and that it’s really hard on her and we’re close. They might’ve thought I was talking about myself, wouldn’t that be funny.”
“Funny,” I said, deadpan. “I told Jason you were PMSing and that he could beat me up if he had a problem with you.”
“You did not.”
“Guy’s honor,” I told her.
“Good Lord,” she said. “We’re too weird for this place. Take me home. I’ve got to figure out how to bribe Mom to lie about my ‘cousin’ if they call her.”
* * *
I didn’t tell my folks about Claire’s suspension, but I sent Natalie a note, and posted a long description of the incident on GenderPeace. Thursday at school sucked without Claire, made worse by the recollection that I had to suffer through Dr. Webber again. I thought I’d lucked out and the appointment was going to be cancelled because his office called early in the week to move the time an hour later. I’d been waiting for another call cancelling, but it didn’t come.
Maybe we could talk about his issues for once instead of mine. With as harsh as this week felt, I wasn’t sure I could handle the “men I want to grow up to be” bullshit. Worst case, I’d sit in his office and cry for fifty minutes.
At the appointed time I sat with Mom in the dreaded waiting room, trying to come up with things I could say to kill an hour. I could pretend to have questions about being gay. No, safer to talk about schoolwork. Or I could bring up Claire and see if he’d give me more information about being a woman. That could be fun. Maybe I’d ask about PMS.
Mom had finished straightening all the stacks of magazines and settled down to read one. I watched the hall. At the right time, a person came toward us, but not Dr. Webber. She looked like someone’s grandmother with her short gray-black hair above a wide, friendly face. Instead of walking by us, she came over to Mom and me, holding her hand out to my mom.
“Mrs. Hesse, I’m Dr. Mary Mendel. Dr. Webber has had a family emergency and I’m seeing some of his clients. Chris, would you like to talk to me today?”
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t care who I had to spend the time with and anyone had to be better than Dr. No. Plus there wasn’t any other answer I could get away with in front of Mom.
When I stood up, Dr. Mendel came to my midchest, even shorter than Claire. I followed her into an office the same size and shape as Dr. Webber’s, but much more colorful. In the corner where Dr. Webber had his desk, she had a big box of toys: stuffed animals and foam bats and funny shaped pillows. Her couch bore a red, gold and purple throw blanket that matched the colors in the abstract paintings around the room. In addition to a few mismatched chairs, her office had three beanbag chairs: green, orange and red.
“Do you see kids a lot?” I asked as I sat on the couch.
“Yes, and sometimes my adult clients like to play with the toys too.” She smiled, crinkling her eyes.
Her eyes were a clear blue like the January sky when it’s too cold to snow but the sun feels really warm on your skin. I liked her hair too because it was one of those I-don’t-care-what-you-think short styles. It complemented her square face, but I got the impression that she’d just picked it from a list of the most low maintenance styles possible.
She lowered into a chair across from me and opened a manila file, scanning down the page. “So you’ve been here a few times, how’s it been for you?”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Mom thinks it’s making me happier.”
She nodded, read more in the folder and then looked up at me. “You like to make the people around you happy, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“What makes you happy?”
I shrugged while I went through the long list of things I couldn’t say. “I like to read, and hang out with my girlfriend Claire, she’s cool. And she lets me play World of Warcraft on her computer, that’s fun.”
Dr. Mendel grinned, which made the corners of her eyes crinkle more. “What characters do you have?”
“Do you really want to know?” I asked. I didn’t have the patience to bullshit about stuff I cared about. “I mean, do you know what kinds there are?”
“My grandkids taught me to play Champions of Norrath on their PlayStation,” she explained. “Sometimes we play games as a family. I like the Cleric; isn’t that funny for a therapist, so righteous?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ve got a mage, Amalia, she’s my favorite, and a Priest. Claire plays a paladin. But
I like the magic-users.”
“Because of the magic or the damage they can do?” she asked.
I sat up in the chair and really looked at her. She smiled back at me. She was serious, and she’d just asked me the smartest question I’d ever heard about gaming outside of the game itself.
“The magic,” I said.
“I like characters that heal,” she told me. “I think you can tell a lot about what’s important to someone by the kinds of characters they play. What’s your Priest’s name?”
“Thalia. They’re both girls. Do you think that’s weird?”
“No,” she said. “Do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Really?” she asked.
I’d evaded her question and we both knew it, but what was I going to say? Should I tell her it wasn’t weird for me at all and often felt more real than my real life, at least the part about being female? I was not going to sit through another hour of hearing how I wanted to grow up differently from my father.
“Yeah, I think it’s weird,” I said. “But a lot of guys play female characters. They have nice butts.”
She touched her fingertips to her lips, watching me. “And you’re like a lot of guys, are you?”
“No,” I said really fast and then stopped myself.
She returned to the open folder in her hands and traced down the page with one finger.
“Last time with Dr. Webber you brought up questions about gender. Were you trying to get a rise out of him?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
Again, she considered me for a long time without saying anything. I tried to look back at her, but I ended up picking at the seam of my jeans inside my knee.
Finally she asked, “‘Sure’ means ‘I’m agreeing with you in order to make you happy,’ doesn’t it?”
I didn’t know what to say, but I gave her a little nod.
“You weren’t trying to be antagonistic, were you?”
She paused again and I nodded. I was so afraid and hopeful at the same time that I could feel tears pushing at the edge of my eyes. I blinked hard and let my eyes burn with the effort of not crying.
“I’m not crazy,” I said.
“I don’t think you are,” she agreed. “We have about forty minutes left together today and if you want we can spend all of it talking about World of Warcraft. What do you want to talk about?”
I glanced up enough to point at the folder, then went back to staring at my knees. I wanted to believe we could talk about this and it would be okay but it was so dangerous. If she turned out like Dr. Webber or told Mom, I didn’t have a lot of reserve left.
“Can I tell you what I’m seeing when I look at you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You look like someone who is very tense, very guarded. You have a lot of anger and grief, and some very strong defenses. You’re also sensitive, intelligent and caring. I’d like to see more of you come out.” Dr. Mendel closed the folder and set it on the end table next to her. “I want you to know that anything you say in this room I will not repeat to your parents. No notes, no record, a safe place for you to talk, okay?”
I wanted to tell her but I couldn’t.
After a moment of quiet, she went on. “I think if I had something that was very sensitive and I wanted help but was afraid to ask for it, that I might bring it up casually to see what response I got. If you had asked me what I thought about trans people I would tell you that I’m familiar with the standards of care detailed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. I do meet their guidelines for mental health professionals.”
“You do?” The question jumped out of my mouth.
She nodded.
I’d read the WPATH guidelines. If she met their standards, she could help me. She could see me.
I stared at the folder she’d closed and put on the end table. Was she for real about this being a safe place? If she met the WPATH guidelines… I mean, even her just knowing that organization existed was amazing. But if she also met their guidelines that meant she could help me transition.
I had to try.
“Claire says when I’m…when I get to be a girl that I look happier.” Just saying the words put a lump in my throat but lifted a huge weight off my chest. “But she and Natalie are the only two people who know. Other than you.”
She smiled. “Chris—” she started, then paused. “That’s not right is it? Do you have a name you call yourself?”
I didn’t know if I had the guts to say it out loud in the middle of the day in the shrink’s office, but my lips moved without me telling them to. “Emily,” I whispered. “After my grandma.”
“Emily, do you want me to transfer you into my care, so you can see me every week?”
“Totally!”
“Wonderful. Why don’t you bring me up to speed on what you already know and what you hope to get from therapy?”
I filled most of our time telling her about coming out to myself and then to Claire, and meeting Natalie, spending time online, starting to make a plan to transition.
As the minute hand of the clock wandered back toward the top of the hour, she asked, “Do you want to bring Claire with you next week?”
“Yes!”
“Good, I’ll see you both then. I need to talk to your mother now about transferring you into my practice. I promise I won’t tell her anything about what you said here today. I’m going to tell her that I think you respond better to a woman doctor, and then I’m going to call in some favors with Webber so he won’t argue. We should be all set.”
“She is so going to think I have it in for Dad,” I said with a groan.
“We can work on strategies for relating to your parents,” Dr. Mendel assured me. “And for coming out to them. But for right now I want you to know you’re safe.”
“Thanks,” I told her. “That’s…that’s great.”
* * *
The visit with Dr. Mendel gave me enough hope to coast through the following week. Claire had had a rough time with her mom about school and ended up grounded, which meant she spent all her time in her room reading and playing World of Warcraft. She could only talk to me on the phone for five minutes at a time, to get updates from school, but we sent each other long emails.
Her mom had tried to cut off Internet access, but Claire protested that she needed it to research the papers she was working on. That might have been true, but it was more to research having a higher level WoW character. I wondered if someday we could get Dr. Mendel into WoW with us when I wasn’t her patient anymore. We already had one grandmother in our guild; she was very sweet to everyone and always called me “honey” when we chatted.
Natalie invited me to meet her in the city on Sunday to go to a support group she attended. Off I went, with a flimsy excuse to Dad about a pair of goggles I wanted to buy for swimming that I couldn’t find in Liberty. The team still had off-season workouts twice a week, though missing one wasn’t as big a deal as during the season. I usually went out of habit.
I picked up Natalie from her house and we got brunch so I could catch her up on all the news, especially Dr. Mendel. Then we drove to a stocky brick community center. The inside resembled a mutated school with long corridors branching off each other, filled with thick wooden doors.
Natalie knew where she was going, so I followed. “This group is pretty random,” she warned. “My shrink suggested I go once a month, sometimes I come twice. The facilitator is great. And some of the people have amazing stories.”
“What do you mean random?” I asked.
“It’s a general trans support group, so we get a lot of different people, ages, backgrounds.”
She wasn’t kidding. There were about fifteen people in the room when we walked in. Natalie introduced me to the facilitator while I got my bearings.
“Elizabeth,” she said, holding out her hand.
“This is Emily,” Natalie said and I beamed at the sound of my name.
&nbs
p; “Glad to have you, welcome,” Elizabeth told me.
She was about my height with a halo of blond hair and bright eyes. She had the smallest nose and I felt a pang of jealousy. At brunch, Natalie had said she was some kind of psychologist. How had she ended up facilitating a group of transgender people? How did regular people get interested in us? Did she know someone or were we research to her? Or could you actually make money with a psychology practice aimed at the transgender community? Maybe in the Cities it was possible.
We had a few more minutes before the session started, so Natalie introduced me to more people with a dizzying array of descriptors, including trans, MTF, FTM, but also nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid. Was I allowed to be confused about this? I just wanted to be a girl.
I met Renee, a woman in her mid-fifties who had recently started transition and looked like someone’s plain grandmother with the hands of a lumberjack. Renee had been talking about her kids with beautiful, brown-skinned Vivianna who had the body of a ballet dancer and her black hair up in a cool, asymmetrical messy bun.
“She’s half-Spanish, half-Korean,” Natalie whispered to me, though I hadn’t asked.
“But why is she here?” I whispered back.
“Because she’s like us. She transitioned seven years ago. Except she didn’t get the surgery. She says she doesn’t need that to be a woman. I can’t imagine.”
“Oh wow,” I said and quickly added, “I mean, I wouldn’t have guessed she’s trans. I can sort of understand about the surgery. I’m definitely getting facial surgery first. So many more people see my face than my…parts.”
Natalie sighed at me. “Don’t you think that would be different if you didn’t already have a girlfriend?”
I shrugged because this wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. Nodding toward an average-sized white guy with short brown hair and a goatee, I asked, “Shouldn’t he shave?” I couldn’t stand my own facial hair.
“Steve’s FTM.”
My brain took a second to translate: female-to-male. I looked again. It was impossible to tell. He could’ve been any of the guys on the swim team with me.
