Tomboy Survival Guide

I am not trapped in the wrong body; I am trapped in a world that makes very little space for bodies like mine.

Some thoughts on heaven? I have this theory that heaven is different for everyone. It has to be, or it wouldn’t be heaven. My grandmother’s heaven? In her heaven she doesn’t have to share the remote with anyone, and it is Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune on all the time, with nary a rerun ever, and the old lady always wins the big money and a trip to Europe to tour a castle or somewhere warm but not too hot with nice churches. In her heaven your knees don’t hurt and your back doesn’t hurt and you get to be whatever age was your favourite age to be and you still have all your teeth and there are bingo games right after dinner and raspberry hard candies and no one ever has to do the dishes. In my gran’s heaven, you can still have yourself a proper smoke in the living room and it doesn’t ruin the new paint job and the lawn never gets too long and the foxes don’t chase the birds off the birdfeeder. In her heaven, a nice bit of cheese won’t give you the bad stomach and real men don’t beat their wives or fuck their children, and every day is payday, and the Friday of a long weekend. Floors wax themselves, but you still get to hang the laundry, but only if you feel like it.

I didn't know why it made my heart sing loud to itself that a stranger thought I was a boy. It just did. Made me feel like he could look inside me and see some part of the truth of me in there. But it did make me inexplicably sad that a stranger could see me, and my own family could not.

It’s a terrifying thing, the pain of a stranger. Impossible to bear it all, even on a strong day, even when the sun is shining and my back doesn’t hurt and the dishes are all done.

It's not you, it's them. It really is. And those boxes, those binaries, those bathroom signs, those rigid roles, they hurt them too, they do, they carve away at their souls and secret desires and self-esteem and believable dreams and possible wardrobes and acceptable careers just like they do ours, just it's harder for them to tell it's happening on account of no one is hassling them in the bathrooms every other day about it. They somehow just fit better in those boxes, so they can't see what fitting has cost them, not like we can.

Thou shalt not let the world make you hard

Some of us have hard roads, but the Lord never gives anyone a burden without also giving them a gift. Your job is to find out what that gift is and use it, y'hear me? God doesn't make mistakes. Never forget that. You are exactly who God meant you to be.

books: Nancy Drew, Harriet the Spy, Encyclopedia Brown, and later, anything with even a passing mention of sex in it: Judy Blume’s Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, and those Clan of the Cave Bear books, the whole Flowers in the Attic series. But mostly we were obsessed with a book called The Chrysalids. We

How she loved us all, no matter who we were, no matter what we did, her whole band of misfits. I am so proud of you, she would say.

C​G/B​C To play the drums ​F​C/F​G To be picked for teams ​C​C/F​C A safe place to pee ​Em​Am Tall trees to climb ​F​C/E​G A dark blue bike ​C​G​C For her to notice me ​E Don’t braid my hair ​Am Don’t make me wear ​G That bridesmaid’s dress, oh joy ​C​G/B​C That school today ​F​C/E​G Will be easy I pray ​C​G​C Or to just wake up a boy C (Muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles) C Thou shalt learn to wink ​G Thou shalt learn all the knots ​F Thou shalt cuss liberally ​C Thou shalt not trash talk ​G the girls ​​F Thou shalt not let the world make you hard ​​C Thou shalt learn to dance and lead C (Muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles) C Thou shalt acquire scars ​G Thou shalt start a pine cone war ​F Thou shalt practice throwing punches ​C Thou shalt not wear a skort ​G Get dirty ​​F In your pockets thou shalt keep A special rock a pocket knife your grubby mitts ​C And several melodies G Tomboy! Tomboy! Tomboy! F​Dm​G​C Tomboy! Tomboy! Tomboy! (Muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles) (repeating) C I always have a piece of string G I want to practice French kissing F Don’t cry so much all of the time G I shine my armour every night G Tomboy! Tomboy! Tomboy! F​Dm​G​C Tomboy! Tomboy! Tomboy! C Thou shalt learn to wink G Thou shalt learn all the knots ​F Thou shalt cuss liberally ​C Thou shalt not trash talk ​G the girls ​​F Thou shalt not let the world make you hard make you bad ​​C Thou shalt learn to dance and lead G Tomboy! Tomboy! Tomboy! F​Dm​G​C Just to be a good Tomboy!

Imagine a world full of strangers who all have a tiny little razor in their hands and they can randomly, mostly accidentally, shave a tiny piece of your soul off you while they sell you a newspaper or pass you the key to the bathroom at the gas station. Now imagine your classmates and co-workers have an even bigger blade, and can cut deeper. Imagine your friends and family members wield a really big knife. Imagine that all of these cuts can whittle away at the flesh of you, day after day after day, rendering the truth of you into a sliver, almost invisible, unrecognizable. Imagine that these cuts sting for hours afterwards, sometimes days, and that they tend to fester. Imagine that you have to get through every day, bleeding from hundreds of wounds, some little and some deep, all the while pretending that nothing hurts.