Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out (6 page)

JESSY:
When most trans men go through transition, they don’t want anything to do with femininity. They don’t want anything to do with being a woman. They just want to be completely accepted in the straight world. When I first started my transition, I wanted it to be complete, from one side to the other. But now I’m embracing my in-between-ness. I’m embracing this whole mix that I have inside myself. And I’m happy. So forget the category. Just talk to me. Get to know me.

It was, like, I was trying not to cry, but it was really hurtful because . . .

Thinking about that day again . . . one of many . . . people can be so nasty, so rude. I didn’t do anything to her. She had to butt into my life for no reason.

I was picked on way too much to keep my mouth shut now. My mom is very worried that my temper could get me into trouble. I don’t let people walk all over me no more, like they used to.

I’ve been called a man before. Even now, some girls say I look like a man. I don’t know how they can pick it up, but they do. That makes me feel less a woman. I start questioning: Do I really pass in society? I don’t want to get emotional.

The other day I was thinking, I really, really hate being a transgender. It’s a constant struggle. It’s so annoying. While everyone else my age is saving up for a car or a house, I’m saving up to look possible. I’m saving up for a vagina.

Me and my boyfriend, we’ve been having problems. And it sucks that I can’t get over thinking that it’s because I’m transgender. Like, how do you go all your life dating genetic women and then date a trans woman? Doesn’t he miss a vagina? When a biological woman meets a man, she doesn’t have to explain herself and hope that she will be accepted for who she is, unless she has an STD or something. When people see you they know that you’re a woman, there’s no question about it. But for me, that’s something I have to explain and hope will be accepted.

When I go out I can’t make any mistakes. My hair has to be exactly right. My makeup, my outfit, even my smell must be feminine. There are certain outfits that make me look more masculine than other ones. The other day, I bought a shirt that had ruffles on the shoulders. They made my shoulders look huge. So I can’t wear that.

There were days when I would not go to school, knowing I damn well needed to get my butt to school ’cause I was on the verge of failing. My appearance stopped me. As I went outside I started to get panicky because I didn’t feel right about the way I looked. I just turned back.

When I was born, I was named Matthew. Early on, when I was little, I felt that I wanted to be a girl, but I didn’t have a full understanding about it. I knew I was a boy because my mom and my dad told me I was one.

When mom went to work, and my dad was in the living room watching TV, I would go into their bedroom with my brother Jonathan and play a game called Moolah.
Moolah
is slang for “money” in Spanish. The whole concept of the game was shopping. We would put on my mother’s scarves and attach bobby pins here and there so that the scarves would come down really long. That was our hair.

I was about six, and Jonathan was seven or eight. One of us would play the cashier, and the other would be the shopper. We’d go around the room with pretend purses in our hands and say, “I want this, this, that.” That was my idea about what girls do.

Elvin would sometimes see us and tell my dad or mom, “They’re acting like girls.”

When my mom questioned us, I’d say, “I’m just a man with long hair.” All my life I had an obsession with long hair. If we went to McDonald’s and they were giving away little Barbies, I wanted the Barbie because of the hair.

My mom bought me and my brother lots of toys. When the movie
Pocahontas
came out, my mom bought me a John Smith doll, with his short hair, and my brother the Indian, with long, silky hair. I got really angry. In the middle of the night, I chopped the Indian’s hair off. I did.

They called me a sissy and a faggot. I told my mom, and she wrote a letter to the teacher or the principal. It didn’t embarrass me to get a bully in trouble, but I didn’t want to have to keep going to my mom saying somebody’s bothering me. That was embarrassing.

My brother Jonathan said, “You point out the kids to me, and I’m going to fuck them up.” I was so afraid that things would escalate, and I didn’t want my brother to get hurt. So I never said anything.

There was this girl in my elementary school in the fifth grade. All the boys were crazy about her. She was the
it
girl. She already had big boobs, a small waist, and a big butt. She was my ideal girl. I wanted to look like her. I wanted the attention from boys. She was tall. Her name was Christina. At that time I thought that if I was a girl, my name would be Christina. My mom hates that name.

By the time Jonathan was eleven years old, he told me he was gay. When he turned twelve or thirteen, he told my mother and she completely flipped out. “That’s disgusting!” she said, and started crying. Then she said to me, “I hope you’re not gay too.”

“No, I like girls,” I told her. I was ten years old. What did I know?

My mother comes from a Catholic family who always went to church. She had no idea that Jonathan was gay. You can’t tell unless you pay close attention to his eyebrows or something because they’re really plucked. I was even shocked when he told me. I was very, very shocked.

Once my mom found out, everything started changing for my brother. He started dressing more feminine. He wore more colors. He brought gay people to the house. My mom wanted to be supportive, but she couldn’t. She went to church and prayed for him. She cried over it. I have no idea if she spoke to the priest, but she did speak with her sisters. They all said, “He’ll come out of it. It’s just a phase.” Bull crap!