Parrotfish

People changed lots of other personal things all the time. They dyed their hair and dieted themselves to near death. They took steroids to build muscles and got breast implants and nose jobs so they'd resemble their favorite movie stars. They changed names and majors and jobs and husbands and wives. They changed religions and political parties. They moved across the country or the world — even changed nationalities. Why was gender the one sacred thing we weren’t supposed to change? Who made that rule?

But you can only lie about who you are for so long without going crazy.

When I decided I was a boy, I realized that if I wanted to pass, I'd have to learn to walk differently, talk differently, dress differently, basically act differently than I did as a girl. But why did we need to act at all?

I guess I'd just been thinking about it for so long that I forgot changing your gender was not even a question for most people. They just took for granted being a boy or a girl. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be so sure of yourself.

Did the women feel like I was deserting them by deciding to live as the other gender? Maybe for Dad and Charlie, it didn't seem strange to want to be male, since that's what they were. But Mom and Laura—and, of course, Eve—acted like I was betraying them somehow. Would I have to give them up if I wasn't a girl anymore? I hoped not. I hoped that changing my gender wouldn't mean losing my entire past.

But I knew the first question Mom asked Gail was, Is it a boy or a girl? Because, for some reason, that is the first thing everybody wants to know the minute you're born. Should we label it with pink or blue? Wouldn't want anyone to mistake the gender of an infant! What is that so important?

I was surprised at how much general fear and anxiety lurked inside me these days. I'd never been a fearful person, never even understood phobias like fear of heights of water or snakes or any of those things. And while I knew that my coming out as a transgender person was going to throw certain people for a loop, I somehow hadn't realized how much it would throw me.

Why can't I act like a girl? I used to ask myself that question all the time. When the swimming teacher said, "Boys in this line; girls in the other," why did I want so badly to stand with those rowdy, pushy boys, even though my nonexistent six-year-old boobettes were already hidden behind shiny pink fabric, making it clear which line I was supposed to stand in? I wondered, even then, why I couldn't be a boy if I wanted to. I wasn't unhappy exactly; I was just puzzled. Why did everybody think I was a girl? And after that: Why was it such a big freaking deal what I looked like or acted like? I looked like myself. I acted like myself.