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The cotton balls soak up remover and the blue polish rubs off my toes a bit at a time. It feels right. It feels necessary. Painting my toes is the one way I can take control. The one way I can fight back. The one way I can give voice to this idea inside me that gets heavier every year: I’m not supposed to be a boy.
The lie is suffocating. Every time I have to play along, I feel like I’m betraying myself.
The dirty little secret about growing up as a boy is if you’re not any good at it, they will torture you daily until you have the good graces to kill yourself.
The one thing I must never do is try to fit in with the girls. I don’t know what would happen if I tried, but I have a screaming animal instinct that tells me not to even consider it.
Dreadnought’s eyes focus on me like he’s really seeing me for the first time. “Christ, you’re just a boy.” I don’t know why I can’t lean into the familiar lie the way I do with everyone else. It just feels wrong to lie to Dreadnought, and it hurts that he thinks I’m a dude. “I’m not a boy!” I hiss at him. “Don’t be in such a hurry. You’ll be a man—” Dreadnought breaks off in a fit of hacking coughs. “You’ll be a man soon enough.”
Worst phrase to hear ever
Father, I was out buying nail polish to wear in secret because I’ve been half the colors of the rainbow for years now,
“Don’t say that. We’re going to get through this, okay? I will find a way to fix this. You have my word.” “Uh, sure. Thanks.” And then he sweeps me into one of those rough, manly hugs he’s so big on. A healthy masculinity, he calls it, over and over again. I am suddenly filled with contempt. It takes an effort of will not to peel him off me, and I shiver with disgust. I don’t care what he says. I don’t care what he wants. I don’t care what he thinks. I am a girl. I am free. And I am never. EVER. Going back.
I don’t like thinking about that, because it reminds me that I’m a horrible person.
I will never stop. I will never give this up. I will never be what they want me to be.
My name is Danielle Tozer. I am a girl. No one is strong enough to take that from me anymore.
A fait accompli, it’s called, an accomplished fact. Do it fast without their permission, and then there’s nothing they can do to change it back.
Immediately upon the heels of this understanding is another: I must not say this out loud. To say it out loud is to name it, and to name it is to give it irresistible power. That power will mean it can no longer be ignored.
As my anger cools, I realize I’ve been feeling things a lot more recently. My highs are higher. My lows are lower. Before, it seemed like half the time I didn’t have feelings as much as I had a script of how I thought I was supposed to feel, and I just followed the script. Maybe for people who are actually male that’s not what it feels like, but for me, testosterone muffled everything. Now it’s like the estrogen in my blood has taken the cotton out of my head, and I’m feeling things clearly for the first time.
“It won’t change because I don’t want it to.” Mom steps back a little. “I thought you understood that.” “Why would you think that?” she asks. “Because you bought me those things. Because…” My throat clenches up and my eyes prickle with tears. Because we had such a nice day out together. Because I felt closer to you that weekend than I ever have before. Because I thought you loved me, and could see I was happy now. I have all the things I need to say, but none of the strength to say them. “Maybe that was a mistake,” she says quietly. “I shouldn’t have encouraged you.”
God, I was so stupid. I’m always stupid. I always mess it up. I’m a worthless, stupid, disgusting little freak. I start crying again because I realize I still hate myself.
Once they whipped up a batch of this super serum, they needed someone to try it out on, so they did whatever white men do when they have a dangerous, unpleasant job that wants doing—they looked around for some brown people and volunteered them. That was Granddad. They told him it was a new kind of vaccine.
The anger was there, but I packed it up and stored it away, deep inside me where it piled up into great heaping mountains that I pretended I didn’t have.
