Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out (7 page)

I really was close to my extended family, but not anymore. They are just so narrow-minded. Every time I go over to my grandmother’s house, they want to pray for me. I really don’t need to be prayed for.

I was always feminine. Even in my early teens, I was feminine. I’d ask my mom, “How come my voice isn’t getting deep?”

“Oh, you’re just a late bloomer. Eventually, you will get a deep voice.” But I never did.

At least send me to a coed Catholic school. She didn’t want to do that. She was under the assumption that I was straight — straight but feminine.

My oldest brother, Elvin, had gone to an all-boys Catholic school, where he became disciplined and focused. So off I went to Mount Saint Michael Academy, a Catholic school for boys.

I was so nervous. Before I went there, I asked my gay brother, Jonathan, “How do I act like a man?” He would tell me I had to walk a certain way, like the hoodlums on the street, walking with a little lean, like, a little ghetto, gangsta boy. I practiced.

Jonathan said, “You have to change your clothes style too.”

“Okay, what do I have to wear?”

“You have to wear baggy pants. You have to wear oversize T-shirts, a do-rag, and sneakers.” Ugh! Everything I was not interested in! I liked wearing simple T-shirts with jeans. I’d look at girls’ clothes and think,
Oh, my God, I wish I could wear that!

Jonathan taught me how to sit with my legs open, which I could never do naturally. I hated it. It was the most uncomfortable feeling in the world for me. It looked gross.

Nothing came naturally to me. He told me I had to deepen my voice a little bit and talk like a man. That was kinda hard to keep up.

When I walked into the all-boys school that first day, I felt I had done everything Jonathan taught me. I said, “Oh, hey, what’s up? My name is Matthew. Oh, what’s your name?” I wore baggy pants. It came off so phony; it just wasn’t me. At all!

No one accepted me as a straight boy. Within a week, they started picking up that I was naturally feminine, a quiet kid, a shy kid. When I talked, I moved my hands around. When I drank something, I put my pinkie finger up. Those are not exactly masculine traits.

People started talking. “I think he’s gay.” One boy who was nasty called me a faggot. I would stand in the courtyard in the school, and someone would beam double-A batteries at me, just to hurt me. If someone beams double-A batteries at you, it’s going to hurt. They would throw branches and twigs at me. They didn’t do it to my face. They would just toss it and act like it wasn’t them.

Once the kids started picking on me, calling me names, I needed somewhere to go and vent. I went to the school counselors. I had four counselors in four years. I trusted all of them because I assumed they were professionals. And they were. They helped me a lot.

Eventually I did find somebody to be my friend. Christopher. Christopher was a very feminine boy who liked Britney Spears, just like me. I had the feeling he was gay. When I asked him, though, he said he wasn’t. He played it up that he was a straight boy, but I wasn’t buying it. Eventually he came out to me and he became my best gay friend. He wasn’t transgender. He was just gay. We still talk to this day.

Hoay is my best straight boy friend. I used to be very attracted to Hoay. When I was in my androgynous stage, I told him on several occasions, “I like you a lot.”

“I don’t go that way,” he said.

I’d say, “But I’m a girl.” That was something he couldn’t grasp. I don’t blame him. He met me as a boy, so I can’t expect him to see me completely as a girl. He accepts me as a girl now, but I don’t know if he completely sees me as one. He treats me like a girl. He’s protective. I’ve heard from other people that Hoay really cares about me and worries about me a lot. But I don’t think he would ever want to be with me.

I’ve gotten over that whole attraction to him. I see him as my brother. I’m glad to have him as one of the high-school friends I still talk to.

The school gave us Mount Saint Michael T-shirts for gym class. We had Mount Saint Michael shorts, and of course had to wear sneakers. Ugh! I was okay about going to the locker room, but I felt uncomfortable changing in front of people. I had hairy legs, and I couldn’t shave them because for one, I didn’t want my mom asking questions, and two, I didn’t want to make myself more of an outcast. It felt so nasty to have hairy legs.

At that time I tried to blend in. I had a little mustache, more like peach fuzz, that I eventually shaved off because I didn’t like it. I was still trying to convince people I was straight. (But by my senior year, I was wearing spandex to gym class.)

I’d go to the corner to change because I didn’t want to take off my pants. I’d keep the T-shirt under my button-down ’cause I never wanted to take off my shirt in front of the other guys. I didn’t feel that I was exposing my breasts, ’cause I didn’t have them yet. I just never liked to be seen with my shirt off. It made me feel uncomfortable. No one laughed at me. The only time they started laughing at me was in my senior year when I started dressing like a woman.

After everybody changed, we’d all go upstairs to the gymnasium and sit on our spots. The instructor, Mr. Valentino — I really hated him so much — there need to be more understanding gym teachers, there really do — he would make me do push-ups and sit-ups. We’d run around the track or play basketball. I told them I had asthma and I couldn’t run. This is the truth. I do have asthma. But I also didn’t want to run.

Then when we played basketball, I was always picked last. The teacher would place me on a team, and the boys would get upset, not because I was feminine but because I just couldn’t play. I didn’t know how to dribble the ball. I didn’t shoot. I had never played these things. My dad would take me to a park and try to teach me, but I was never interested. I didn’t want to ride bikes. I didn’t want to play football. I didn’t want to play Frisbee. None of that! I wanted to shop. I’ve been drawn to shopping all my life.

I wasn’t really interested in learning, I just did what I had to do, and that was that. If there was a test, I’d study, but I wasn’t interested in English or history. I was interested in art and fashion. I guess I was good at it. I did what I had to do and was on the honor roll and dean’s list all four years.

I wasn’t a reader. I read
Cosmo.
I read
Glamour.
For some reason, my mom didn’t think much of it. She was in denial.

I drew girls a lot. That’s all I drew. To this day, I draw girls. I’m so into looking good and beautiful, and I’m always trying to figure out the next thing to make me more feminine.

One of the school counselors said, “I want to see your sketchbook. I want to see your art.”

“Sure.” I showed her pictures of girl after girl after girl — different kinds of girls. She said, “You know, when people draw, it’s kind of like a way of escaping. People draw what they want to be.”

The moment she said that — I had never spoken to her about transgender issues; I just said that I was gay and that people disliked me, they hated me — the moment she said that, I started thinking,
Well, yeah, I want to be a girl, but it will never happen.

I told her that I wished I had been born a girl, but I knew it would never happen. If it did happen, I’d worry about passing. “I don’t want people wondering what I am. I don’t want to get hurt. So I’m definitely not going to do anything about it.” And she was, like, “Okay.”

But always in the back of my mind, I wished I was a girl.

In my eleventh-grade year, I went with my class on a boys’ retreat. On the retreat we all had to admit something, or say something we needed help with from God, because, after all, it was a Catholic retreat. I told everybody that I just want acceptance from everyone because I’m gay. By that time, I knew I wanted to be a woman, but I said that I was a gay boy because it was easier. The room was silent. I was so nervous. It was the first time I actually came out to people that I was different.

I think that’s why some of the boys later had trouble understanding my transition. In my eleventh-grade year, I said I was gay, and in my senior year, I said that I was a girl.

I learned about transgender people when my brother Jonathan was dating a boy named Renee. No, I take that back. I learned about it when my brother started cross-dressing. He would dress up in women’s clothes. He put on a wig and filled up bags with rice and put them in a bra. He went out in seven-inch stilettos and really short shorts. I found it really weird. We would play photo shoots in my house when my mom and dad were gone. This was when we were in our teens. I was about sixteen. He was seventeen.

He’s not a cross-dresser now. I think he was trying to figure himself out too. He went from acting very straight, to very feminine, to cross-dressing, to straight-acting again. That was his process.

I asked him, “Could I look like a girl too?” My brother said, “No, you could never look like a girl.”

“Let me try.” I went into the bathroom and put on everything he put on. I looked in the mirror and thought I was the most beautiful girl in the world. I became Christina. I walked out of the bathroom to show my brother.