Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out (15 page)
I realized how weird my life was: wearing girl clothes,
feeling
I was a girl,
thinking
I was a girl. ANDRUS brought normalcy into my life. I didn’t mind being a boy. I liked being tough and playing sports. And I wasn’t scared of bugs. I felt like a cool kid. But still, I loved to watch someone’s hair being done. I loved looking at dresses. I accepted that I wasn’t supposed to do that, but I still fantasized about it.
I asked my teacher, “Why do girls call each other ‘girlfriends,’ but I can’t call my friends ‘boyfriends’?” I got in a little trouble for that.
The teacher sent me out of the room just because I asked that question. I didn’t think I was saying anything wrong. I thought I was being logical. I guess they knew my case and they didn’t want me to regress. They didn’t want me to go back to doing girls’ stuff. Stop him in his tracks! That’s the only explanation. Why would they send me to a time-out room for this?
When I turned eleven, I left ANDRUS and went home to live with my grandma. To tell the truth, I was a monster at the time. I was really frustrated. I missed being at ANDRUS, where I had friends, where it felt like I had family. At home, I didn’t have no brothers. I didn’t have no sisters. It was just me and my grandmother.
At my new school, people started picking on me. I never dealt with that before. It was the first time I felt lonely. That’s a really hard feeling. I felt that everybody hated me. It made me depressed. It made me sad. It made me feel creepy. So I started acting out, cursing my grandmother again.
School made Mariah feel like a loser, so she acted like a loser.
I just started going off. Have you ever heard of kids who used to get picked on, whatever, and they became psychopaths? That wasn’t me. I never became a psychopath. But I did go berserk. I made threats. I wanted to hurt their feelings. I was mad.
I threatened my teacher. To tell the truth, I actually pushed her to the floor — and she was pregnant. I know that was bad of me. I regret it. But she crossed the line. She was in my face all the time. She said that I threatened to blow up the school. This was after 9/11, so when a kid said that back then, it was a big deal. They called the police on me and made it seem I was a terrorist. I did say I wanted to set the school on fire and blow it up. But I was mad. I would never actually do it. I ended up back in the system.
First they sent me to a hospital, where I was diagnosed as a “bipolar, clinical psychopath with narcissistic tendencies.” Can you believe that? That’s crazy!
There were allegations that I was abusive, not good in school. The report said that I literally set the school on fire. I never did that! If I had set the school on fire, I would have been in jail. Come on! That’s really a heinous crime, no matter how old you are. I didn’t do that. I was just really mad.
At Nassau University Medical Center, a psychiatric center, Mariah was put on all kinds of medications.
It was horrible. It was like being at a cuckoo house. I was a zombie. The meds made me think slow, move slow. I had been one of the bright kids in my class. I’m not a genius, but I have good insights, and if I study, I’m really good. The medicine delayed my concentration. I couldn’t do math. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t run. The medicine made me flip out.
I was not crazy. I knew it, but they didn’t know it. And I was still acting up, still cursing people, and they go by your behavior.
When Mariah turned twelve, she was placed in a state hospital called Sagamore. She started gaining weight, lots and lots of weight.
I went from weighing ninety pounds to 120 . . . to 150 . . . to 175.
She was moved to yet another placement center, currently called MercyFirst, in Syosset, Long Island. At the time it was Saint Mary’s Children’s Center. Mariah hated that place. And then another weird thing happened.
I was starting to look like a girl. I had a girl’s face and a high-pitched voice. My chest wasn’t like a man’s chest. I was growing women’s boobs with large areolae. People would ask me if I was a girl, and I used to get mad.
Everybody else went from being a boy to being a man. It seemed like I was turning from being a boy to being a woman. Personally, I think it was all the medicines I was on. I was on a whole lot of meds.
How the hell does a boy start looking like a girl? Why?
Everybody else was getting deeper voices. Everybody else was getting facial hair. Everybody else was getting bigger penises.
Now I’m glad my penis is small. I’ve never even used it. But at the time, I wanted it to be big because I wanted to be with a girl. I told myself,
If I had a big dick, I’d be with a girl.
I was still very popular. The staff loved me, and the kids loved me. But I was very emotional. I was a drama queen, crying all the time. I became a crybaby, clinging like a little boy to its mother — or a little girl.
I didn’t like that about me. I tried my hardest to be a guy again. I played football and ran track. I tried to lose weight. No matter how hard I tried to be a guy, I looked like a girl. I was really pissed off.
Somebody said that if you drink liquor, you get a lower voice. I was drinking. It’s hard to drink liquor when you’re thirteen.
“Smoke cigarettes. It will make you have a deep voice,” a friend told me. I was smoking cigarettes back to back to back to back. It didn’t even work. It kinda lowered my voice a little. But I can’t scream. I used to be able to scream, but I can’t scream no more, so I guess it had a little effect.
The many medications made Mariah lethargic and slow-witted. Another patient there took advantage of her weakened state.
This guy got me to perform oral sex on him. I thought I was doing the right thing by performing on him. But I wasn’t. He was just abusing me. He had total mind control over me. He didn’t have to get physical with me; he just knew where to hit me where it hurts emotionally.
We finally got caught in the act, and I was very happy because I wanted it to stop. I think the directors were worried that they could get sued because they kept telling me it was consensual. It wasn’t consensual at all. But I just wanted it to end. I wanted them to stop talking about it, so I agreed.
Afterward, that guy told everybody on campus about us, and they all thought I was this big old homo. Other kids tried to have sex with me. Other kids wanted to abuse me. I was so confused. I was mad at myself, slow because of the medication, and I didn’t know what to do.
When Mariah turned fourteen, she was still a resident at MercyFirst. She was attending summer school and had begun a summer job. Because she had no choice in an institution, she presented as male, but everybody thought of her as female. Although she had lost a lot of weight, she was quite chubby.
I still had my boobs.
Her body was curvy. The other students liked her, and she was feeling very good about herself.
I was happy.
A lot of boys were hitting on her, as if they somehow understood that she was indeed a girl.
I was the most popular girl on campus. I started home visits. I went home every weekend, Friday to Sunday. It seemed like everything was going good for me. I always wanted to go home, but I knew in reality home wasn’t good for me. The only reason I wanted to go home was that was all I knew — that was my home.
In May, a new resident arrived. His name was Victor, Victor from Brooklyn.
There was an event going on and I was looking at him, going,
Wow, he’s cute.
I really liked him. I would go up to him and talk to him and find a reason to be next to him. Our cottages were next to each other, and I remember looking at him through the window. I would look at him and smile, and he would smile back at me. I would skip school and go to the gym just to be around him, just to talk to him. I wanted to be his girlfriend. It didn’t seem odd or quirky; it was natural. I was confident. I don’t know where that came from because I didn’t have a lot of confidence at the time.
Although they never had a physical relationship, Victor knew that Mariah was interested.
Well, one time he approached me. He said, “I’m told that you’re really good at head.” I was freaked out. I was excited. I was like, “Oh, my God!”
He said, “Well, why don’t you do that to me?”
I said, “I would, but I have to go to work right now. When I come back, I will do it.”
I remember walking with my work group and thinking, “Oh, my God, he wants to . . . you know . . . with me.” I had butterflies in my stomach.
When I came back, I waited and waited for him. When I found him, I asked him if he wanted to do it, but he said, “I was joking.”
And yet Mariah felt that they shared a strong connection. By the end of the summer, Victor was released from MercyFirst.
It could have happened if he had stayed there longer, and if I had made a move. But I was really nervous at the time. I wasn’t how I am now. I was very shy. He was an older guy. He was seventeen or eighteen, and I was fourteen. I always felt that he was out of my league ’cause he was this really cute guy and I was this ugly, fat thing. Any girl could have had him.
After Victor left, a Mariah Carey album was playing. There was this song, “We Belong Together.” Music never did it for me before, but when “We Belong Together” came on, I thought,
Oh, my God! Mariah Carey gets it.
That song talked to me. I love Mariah Carey. I’m a big fan.
Mariah Carey is so beautiful, and I remember thinking,
I want to look like that.
I went into my room and it suddenly clicked to me,
Frank, you’re bisexual.
I’m bisexual? It was like the wind blew in and hit me that I’m bisexual. I had a really good friend on staff at that time. Her name was Ruth. I went to see her.
“Miss Ruth, I think I’m bisexual, but don’t tell anybody — I’m still new to it.” See, I wasn’t the type to be in the closet. I always told people who I was.
Once I was released from MercyFirst and moved home, I started acting more like a girl. I started losing weight. I started dancing. I wanted a straight guy. I fantasized that I was out with a sexy guy.
When I turned fifteen, I stopped taking my medication and started having panic attacks. I got into another fight with my grandma. I became very aggressive and severely depressed. Basically I was out of control — again.
I also got into a fight with some kid and broke a beer bottle on his head. He needed stitches. I got charged. I went to a juvenile detention center, then back to MercyFirst.
There was a staff woman there I fell in love with. Her name was Karen, and I used to look up to her. She had a very big butt. I used to target her. I’d curse at her. It wasn’t because I hated her — I really liked her — I wanted her to be a part of my life.
I fantasized that I was a beautiful woman. I fantasized that I was Mariah Carey.
At first I changed my name to Monica because that was my mom’s name. I guess I wanted her to be part of me. I fantasized that I was this very big star, a pop singer. I was Lady Gaga, and everybody loved my music.