“I mean he knows that I’m a guy,” I say, ignoring the flinch of shame deep inside me—these days, I don’t even know if I’m a guy myself. “I don’t ever feel like I have to convince him of that. I mean that he calls me by my name: Felix.” “Listen,” he says, “it isn’t easy to just suddenly switch my idea of who you are in my head. For twelve years, you were my baby g—” I cut him off before he can say it. “That’s never who I was. That’s who you assumed I was.”
