I Am J

by Cris Beam

  “Who?”

  “From the Greek myths. There was a god who had both male and female parts—I forgot his name,” she said. “It’s weird. When I used to paint nudes, I would sometimes paint them with both male and female parts.”

  “I don’t have both sets of parts.”

  Blue looked at him. “Oh.”

  They sat together awhile, watching the tourists stream in and out of the cathedral. Tourists made J nervous. The light shifted, signaling afternoon’s descent.

  “I’m glad you were my first boyfriend,” Blue said.

  “So, I’m not anymore?” J wasn’t sure he wanted a girlfriend right now, with testosterone coming up, and college, and finishing high school, and Blue was so—so difficult. He didn’t have another word. Still, his pride was hurt.

  “I don’t know,” Blue said, still staring into space. “I mean, I think we’ve both lied to each other too much. It’d be weird.”

  “I didn’t lie to you about being male. I mean, I am that. I’m trying to be better at that.”

  Blue looked at J and held his gaze. Her eyes welled. “We’re all trying to be better at something.”

  Blue stood up to go. “I’ve got to get back. We’re celebrating Jadzia’s birthday after school, which is where I was supposed to be right now.”

  J raised an eyebrow. “So you lie to them.” Like you lied to me.

  Blue considered this. “I let them think what they want to think about me, and I keep what I know about myself to myself. That way we all agree.”

  Like me, J thought. Blue was deep, no doubt about that. He felt a sharp stab of regret for breaking up like this—under the shadow of a church, no less—but the feeling ebbed when she hugged him. This hug was real and long, and Blue laid her head against J’s collarbone. It was half-sexual and half-sisterly, this hug: Blue didn’t press her body against his as hard as she had in the past, but he could feel her lips brush against his neck. He didn’t need this confusion right now, these mixed messages; why were girls so weird? If he gave in, he knew, Blue would either accuse him of violating the breakup they’d just settled or else be mad that he didn’t call her enough in a few days’ time. Blue was deep, but she was also a teenager, and J was about to become a man. Eighteen and testosterone equaled man in practically any nature documentary. He wriggled himself free and squeezed Blue gently on the shoulders. She got on her tiptoes and kissed him on the nose.

  “I’m keeping the necklace,” she said. “I still like it.”

  “Good,” J said. He helped her gather her paints that were scattered about the ground. “It doesn’t fit me.”

  J watched Blue walk away, her old-man overcoat open to the wind and flapping behind her. J waved, but Blue didn’t see.

  Describe an event that changed your life. J stared at the computer screen, chewing on a pen. He was sitting in the computer room at school, a tattered poster of Sylvia Rivera looking down on him. He’d learned about the Stonewall riots in class, and about how, back in the fifties and sixties, it was illegal to be a person like him. Anyone who was caught even wearing clothes of the opposite sex could be arrested. But one night, Sylvia Rivera fought back. She was in a bar, the Stonewall Inn, in 1969, when the cops raided the place. They wanted to arrest all the gay and transgender people who hung out there. Sylvia, who was “assigned” male at birth, threw the first bottle, and, as his teacher explained, the modern gay rights movement was born. The fight lasted three days. That was an event to write a college essay about.

  The fights J had endured mostly ended in humiliation, and they certainly didn’t lead to anybody’s liberation. But he hoped he could do some damage with his camera. The pictures he’d been taking were getting better; they were telling stories, he knew—but he wanted them to do more. The photos he snapped of Zak and Chanelle had inspired him; he imagined a series of portraits of the people his father would have called freaks, making their way into magazines and books and, hell, maybe even galleries. Not that he went to galleries, but Melissa did. Forget shooting musicians; that dream was tired, it had been done; J wanted his pictures, his people, to fight back. He didn’t want Melissa to dance his story; he wanted to photograph it.

  J didn’t even know what he meant; these were the kind of loose, disjointed thoughts he had when he woke up from a dream. Or tried to write an essay. How could he be accepted for a photography major if he couldn’t even articulate a sound idea for a project? Describe an event. J looked around the empty room. The collected Shakespeare works was still sitting on the table where Chanelle had left it; she obviously wasn’t worried about someone pocketing that. J started typing.

  On the second day starting my new school, J wrote. He knew the grammar sounded wrong, but he kept going. I met a girl named Chanelle. This event changed my life. Chanelle is like me in some ways—we both are easily misunderstood. J worried this sounded simple, or vague, or both. Couldn’t you just buy essays online? Before Chanelle, I was often hateful, but Chanelle wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t afraid to go back to high school, even though she is already twenty years old. She isn’t afraid to write poems or read them to strangers. She isn’t afraid to tell people she’s transgender. Might as well come out, J thought. They’ll know it from the transcripts. And if Zak can be a doctor of gender, then hell. The first day I met Chanelle, she asked if I was an artist. With Chanelle, I knew I could be transgender and an artist. She was my first transgender friend. Meeting her was an event that changed my life. Next Friday, I’m showing my photographs in public for the first time. I’m sending you some photographs, and I hope very much to get into your college and your photography program.

  “Needs more of an arc,” Chanelle said when she phoned J to tell him she read his essay. “But it’s so sweet.”

  “I didn’t write it to be sweet,” J said. He felt embarrassed. “Do you think I’ll get in?”

  “With this essay? No.” J could practically hear her playing with her bangs over the phone. “But writing about me is a good idea. It’s a subject I happen to know a lot about. I’ll help you with it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey, J?” Chanelle’s voice was gentle. “When are you getting your shot, again?”

  “Next Thursday.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  J was glad he’d worn his baggiest jeans. Not that any pair wouldn’t have done the trick, but he wasn’t accustomed to dropping his drawers for strangers. Sitting on the paper that draped the doctor’s exam table, he wished he hadn’t forbidden Chanelle from coming with him; medical clinics were so sterile, they almost seemed hostile. Couldn’t they play some music in here? At least Chanelle would have distracted him. Blown up the latex gloves into balloons or something.

  A nurse had asked J to roll his jeans high enough to expose the top of his right thigh; he stopped his feet from dangling and stiffened up. Take it like a man, he thought. Very slowly he pulled out the piece of paper he’d copied from the Internet the night before. The shehecheyanu. It was a prayer his dad had taught him during his “let’s all be Jewish” phase, when they’d eaten Shabbos dinners together for those brief months when he was ten. Of course, he didn’t remember how to say the shehecheyanu, but he remembered what it meant. His dad had said it with him on his first day of school; you recited the prayer whenever something new or important happened. After the prayer, he had left for fourth grade feeling protected somehow, as if he had an invisible shield around him, delivered by a superhero.

  The paper was crumpled, and the words were a little smudged from J’s sweat. He hadn’t been aware that he’d fiddled with the things in his pocket on his walk to the clinic, but he must have. Still, the prayer was readable. Under his breath, he sounded out the words slowly and carefully. “Baruch ata adonai elohenu melech ha olam, shehecheyanu, v’kiyimanu, v’higiyanu laz’man hazeh.”

  The same doctor who’d drawn his blood a few weeks back knocked once, then walked in. “How you doing?” he asked, glancing
at a clipboard.

  “Fine,” J said, forcing himself to make eye contact. I’m not sick. He stuffed the prayer back in his pocket.

  “You ready?”

  J nodded, a quick jut of the chin.

  “Okay, then.” The doctor swabbed J’s thigh with some wet gauze and unwrapped a syringe. A small amber bottle materialized from the countertop (had that been sitting there the whole time?), and he poked the needle through the top and drew back the plunger. “We can teach you to do this yourself at some point in the future,” he said, staring carefully at the syringe. “People often find that’s easier than coming in.”

  The doctor gave J’s thigh a gentle squeeze, told him to relax. And then—ping—it was in. J glanced at his leg and noticed there was no blood, and then the doctor was pulling out the needle and pressing down a small square of gauze.

  That was it? J thought. Where was the rush, the high he’d expected, been promised from reading stories online? Some guys thought they could feel their bodies changing right away, swore they could sense the liquid seeping and soaking its way through their muscles, but J didn’t feel anything at all. He hopped off the table and rolled down the leg of his pants. He blinked twice, patted his thigh. There’s no going back, he told himself, hoping for a bump in emotion. He thanked the doctor, and his voice came out steady, sounding the same as always. For a brief moment, he wondered if this all was even real.

  But then in the waiting room he saw Chanelle. She had come, after all; he couldn’t be dreaming. She was talking to somebody, a man. When they both turned to look at J, he saw that it was Zak.

  “J, you did it!” Chanelle said, running up to hug him.

  J hugged her back, but stiffly; there were other transguys in the waiting room, and they were watching.

  “You know each other?” J said, motioning to Zak, who was throwing his arm around him and grinning like a fool.

  “Yeah, we met years ago at a trans youth thing,” Chanelle said. “Back when we were babies.”

  “You were the baby,” Zak said, quickly running his eyes over Chanelle’s body. “I was an organizer, remember?”

  “And I have a boyfriend,” Chanelle said, smiling flirtily at Zak but turning back to J. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” J said, feeling dazed. “Didn’t hurt.” He looked at Zak and gave a quick nod of his head. “I don’t feel any pain where they put in the shot. Maybe you had a bad doctor.”

  There was a flurry of movement and color and chaos at the door as a coat was flung off, bags were tossed to the floor, and a swirl of curls popped out of a bright red hat. Melissa rushed over to J, squeezing past Zak and Chanelle.

  “Is it already over? God, I got here as fast as I could!” Melissa gushed, breathless, grabbing J in a quick hug. “We were setting up the space for tomorrow. There’s still so much to get done! I can’t believe it’s tomorrow. My God, J, did you get the shot already?”

  J nodded. “Melissa, this is Chanelle. Oh, and Zak.”

  Melissa blinked and then quickly composed her face into a flat smile, as though guests she hadn’t expected had suddenly dropped in on her at home. “I’m sorry,” she said, extending a hand. “Hi. I’m Melissa.”

  Chanelle and Zak nodded their hellos, and then suddenly J felt it: here were his friends, all in one place, gathered together for him. It was like a family, a holiday, a graduation, a birthday, a plane taking off, a circuit overload. He felt a slight throb in his thigh where the syringe had gone in. Testosterone!

  “Can we go outside?” J asked.

  The group bundled up, and as soon as J hit the door, he ran to the corner at full sprint. The light was red, so he jumped—tagging the bus-stop sign, making a loud thwack. Testosterone! T! He’d done it, and in two weeks he’d do it again. Everything, everything had led to this moment, and J wanted to hug the street—take it all in his arms and pull it inside. He could hold it now. He turned around. There were his friends, halfway down the block, watching him, laughing. And what did he feel? Love. J felt love for each of them—so much, it could almost kill him. For Zak, who’d been doing T for years and made it through; for Chanelle, his first trans friend, who made him feel smarter than he was; and for Melissa—complicated, beautiful Melissa, who loved him despite it all.

  He ran back. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!” he shouted, his breath making a huge cloud of steam. “I feel so damn good!”

  “That’s what hormones do,” Zak said, smiling. Chanelle just nodded.

  “God, maybe I should try some,” Melissa said. “I feel kind of jealous.”

  “We should celebrate,” Chanelle offered.

  They went to a diner around the corner and ordered waffles. For once, Melissa didn’t mention calories when J ordered extra ice cream and scooped some on her plate. Zak ordered a side of bacon, which everyone thought was disgusting, but it actually tasted delicious mixed in with all the sweetness.

  “Can you eat bacon, J?” Chanelle asked, between bites. “Aren’t you part Jewish?”

  “His dad’s, like, the least observant Jew in New York,” Melissa answered for him.

  My dad, J thought. If Manny could see me now. Sitting with two transpeople and a girl I once kissed. Just after I took a hormone shot. He felt proud. “I don’t care what my dad thinks,” he said.

  “Right,” Zak said, but he was smiling. It seemed he hadn’t stopped smiling since he met J at the clinic.

  “Here’s to overcoming our parents’ dreams for us,” Chanelle said, raising her water glass. They all toasted.

  “Here’s to J,” Melissa added.

  J raised his glass and took a long, delicious swallow.

  J arrived at the performance space three hours before the show, lugging one of Melissa’s suitcases. He’d wrapped each of his framed photographs in a few T-shirts or a sweatshirt, but he’d taken a cab and carried the bag in his arms just to be safe. He had a hammer, nails, a level, and a roll of measuring tape in his backpack.

  Dancers were running around everywhere. A cage with two doves sat unattended in a corner, and the birds hopped around nervously. A big guy with dreadlocks was unloading a drum set, and a girl on roller skates was zipping around, barking orders.

  “Can you scoot the drums farther back?” the skater asked, her ponytails bobbing. “We need a lot of room for the water feature.”

  Melissa was nowhere to be seen, but J found his “hallway” easily enough. It was a ten-by-twenty-foot wall made of thin plywood, which formed a backdrop for the chairs in the audience. It was the first thing people would see when they walked in the door.

  J started unwrapping pictures. The first one was the jackhammer cutting through his shadow. He laid it on the floor. Next came the print of his hand punching the phone booth, smashing the “man.” He’d printed up his photos at the shop where Melissa had bought the frames, and they’d done a good job; the colors were even, the lines sharp. Luckily, they had two more frames identical to the others, and now he had a series, of sorts.

  The next photo was the shot of Chanelle’s eyes. He’d blown up the image and cropped out the rest of her face, so only her eyes, looking both determined and lonely, stared back, with the raised eyebrow, like his own. Then came Zak’s muscle shot. This was J’s favorite. He hadn’t noticed when he pushed the button, but when the picture was developed, you could see Zak’s stack of books behind his bulging bicep and the blurred profile of his face. A muscled scholar; J liked it. And the final photo was the one J had shot at the pier the day he ran away—the single gray bird against an even grayer sky. A shadow, then a punch, a stare, then muscles, then flight: the story of J’s life thus far.

  “Do you have an artist’s statement?”

  J jumped. It was Melissa, standing behind him, looking down at the photographs he’d arranged on the floor.

  “A what?”

  “You know, a little bio or something that explains who you are and why you did this work,” she said. She’d piled all her hair into a cone on the top of her head and wrapped yellow DO
NOT CROSS police tape around it. She looked crazy.

  “No,” J answered. He hadn’t thought of it. “Do I have to?”

  Melissa stamped her foot. “J! Do I have to think of everything?”

  J hung the pictures by himself, carefully measuring fourteen inches of space between each frame. The girl on roller skates wheeled by, screeching to a dead stop in front of Chanelle’s eyes.

  “Whoa, those eyes are amazing,” she said. “Is that a man or a woman?”

  J shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  The girl gave him a funny look. “You’re really good,” she said, and skated off. J smiled at the floor.

  J still had enough time before the show to make it back to Melissa’s and type something up. On the train, he decided he’d write PHOTOS BY J SILVER and skip the bio. The more he thought about it, the better it sounded; photos was casual and not too pretentious, and he’d always liked his name. Just a plain letter, not short for anything, able to stand on its own. And the pictures weren’t bad; maybe if people liked them, it would be okay if they knew he took them. Then again, maybe people wouldn’t notice the sign; maybe they wouldn’t even notice the pictures—they were coming for the dance, anyway. Except for Zak and Chanelle, who were now showing up for this stupid thing, thanks to Melissa, who’d invited them.

  “Oof, you stink. You’ve gotta quit that habit,” Karyn said to him when J pushed through the door, reeking of cigarettes. J turned on the computer, but Karyn kept talking. “Do you know anything about this dance tonight? Melissa wouldn’t tell me a thing.”

  J shook his head. Ever since she promised that she wouldn’t dance about anything transgender, Melissa had kept mum about the whole endeavor.

  “I guess it’ll be a surprise, then.”

  J was grateful he could catch a ride with Karyn and hide behind her as they entered the warehouse; people were actually looking at his photographs. An old man with a mustache was peering at the shot of Zak’s muscles, and two girls J thought he recognized from his old high school were staring at the jackhammer. J felt like he might be sick.