Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out (9 page)

“No, actually, I’m not gay. I’m transgender.”

He couldn’t grasp the fact. He thought a boy dressing in girls’ clothes is gay. Period. Whatever.

As I walked down the hall, the freshmen were entering the school. When one freshman saw me, he was, like, “Hey, Mami, you looking so good. What are you doing here?”

I was, like, “Oh, my God, I guess I look like a girl!”

So many of the freshmen were hitting on me. I guess they were being macho. Finally one of the older boys told the younger ones, “That’s not a girl. She’s a
he,
a senior.” And they all started laughing at that boy, saying that he was gay because he hit on me. They were making fun of him.

I quickly became the school’s joke. It was really the underclassmen that had a problem with me. They found my female MySpace account — I had a MySpace account as a woman and I had a MySpace account as a man. My cross-dressing pictures were on the female account. There, I first introduced myself as Christina. I used that account to talk as a woman to different men. It was my way of escaping reality while I was in what I call my androgynous phase.

Someone in the school — to this day I don’t know who did it — found that account and printed out all my crossing pictures. They posted them all over the hallways. It didn’t bother me. I said, “Oh, look at me! I’m so pretty in those pictures.” I looked great in those pictures. I liked the attention. It was guilty pleasure. It’s really weird. I was so comfortable transitioning, I was happy to actually begin. Whenever boys gave me attention, good or bad, they were recognizing my femininity. That made me really happy. The only thing that bothered me was when somebody wrote
fag
on my picture. Somebody also wrote it on my locker.

People didn’t know how to take what I was doing. They were shocked — including teachers and the principal. The principal called me to the office. He and the dean wanted to talk to me.

“Matthew, you need to cut your hair,” the principal said.

“Why?”

“Because that’s school policy. You have to keep it above the collar.”

“Okay, I’ll keep it above the collar.”

“And you need to get rid of those bangs.”

“But what’s wrong with bangs? They’re above my collar.”

“No, you have to read the rules. It says no bangs.”

“Okay, fine,” I said, “I’ll sweep it to the side. But I’m not getting rid of my bangs.” The dean, the principal, and me have always had a problem.

Dress Down Day is when you don’t have to wear a uniform. You can wear whatever you want.
Dress Down Day?
I came into school my usual self — makeup, hair done, nails on — and I wore a pink sweater, a girls’ American Eagle sweater. I wore my mom’s jeans; I actually fit into my mom’s jeans, but they were really tight around the butt and hips. And I wore these flats from Payless that I had bought. At that point, I started progressively buying women’s clothes and throwing out the boys’ clothes.

I wasn’t taking hormones yet. I was waiting. I had gone to Callen-Lorde and started counseling. Their rule is that you have to be eighteen and take counseling for four months before you get hormones.

I sat down in homeroom and took out my makeup bag. I was putting on my mascara, which always embarrassed my friends. “Matthew, don’t do that shit here. What are you doing?”

“I don’t care what people think. I’m going to do what I want.” And on the loudspeaker comes, “
Please send Matthew V. to the principal’s office. NOW!
”

And everybody was going, “Oooooh, you’re going to get in trouble.”

I thought,
Whatever.

I walked into the office and said, “Hi, did you need me for something?” Again, the dean was there; the principal was there. The principal said, “Yeah, why are you dressed like this?”

“Because I want to dress like this. It’s Dress Down Day. I can wear whatever I want.”

“Well, you can’t come to school dressed like a woman.”

“Well, I am a woman.” He got really angry. He slammed his hand on the table, “YOU’RE A BOY! YOU’RE NOT A WOMAN! YOU’RE A BOY!”

I started crying at that point. I said, “Actually, I am a girl. You just need to educate yourself. Get on Google and Google
transsexual,
’cause I’m a girl.”

He said, “You’re creating this whole problem, this whole circus. Anything that happens to you is your fault, because you’re coming to school dressed like a clown!”

I was crying — I’m still crying.

He said, “You need to go home and change into boys’ clothes.”

“Well, I don’t have any boys’ clothes. So if you buy me boys’ clothes, then I’ll wear them.”

“Then I guess you need to go home and stay home and you cannot come to school on any other Dress Down Day.”

“Fine! That’s a day off for me.”

The dean was a little calmer, a little nicer. The principal was a straight-up asshole. I hated him.

The dean said, “Look, Matthew, if you’re a girl, why do you have to show it now?”

“Because I’m not waiting for nothing. I’m not waiting for high school to be over. I want this done now! I’m starting now!”

“But why the nails?”

“Why can’t I have nails?”

“Well, you know you can’t be wearing nails to school.”

“But it’s not in the handbook. If it’s not in the handbook, that means I can wear nails.”

“I’m sorry, but we didn’t think that would be an issue.”

“Well, now you know. Next year you need to put it in the handbook. Till then, I’m going to wear my nails.”

“But why do you need to wear so much makeup?”

“Because it’s not in the handbook, so I can do it.”

The dean said, “Again, we didn’t think we had to address these things because it’s all boys here. We assumed that this would not be an issue.”

“Well, you can’t assume; you need to put it in the handbook.”

“But my wife doesn’t even wear that much makeup.”

“Every girl is different.”

I told him, “You know what? You guys, you need to understand: I’m transgender. I feel like a woman. I don’t feel like a boy. This is what I want to do. There are other transgender people in this school who are afraid to come out.”

Other students had come up to me privately and told me that they feel like a woman but that they couldn’t show it because of school, because of their mom, because they were scared. I’d tell them that I was there once. “You just have to give it a shot. There’s nothing they can really do to you.” That’s what life is about, taking chances. You’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t give it a try.

I think the other students were freaked out because I looked like a girl and I was pressing against gender boundaries. There were some instances when I’d be walking up the stairs and people thought I was a girl. “Oh, there’s a girl here? Oh, wait, that’s that weird kid.”

In art class the teacher told us to hang up our paintings in the cafeteria while the underclassmen were having lunch. I was immediately worried. I told Hoay, who was in the class, “I’m really nervous. I feel like they might throw something at me.” He told me to relax and just hang up my artwork. Lo and behold, when I walked into the cafeteria, everyone took immediate notice of me. I was kinda hard to miss with my red hair. Then slowly but surely I started to hear, “Boo, booo, boooo, booooo.” It got louder and louder, and more intense.

Then they started shouting, “You don’t belong here. Go somewhere else. Get out! Faggot.”

The teachers tried to calm everyone down. I gave my art to Hoay, and I walked out, smiling. I tried hard to hold back my tears. I was smiling because I didn’t want them to see me mad. That would mean I was losing and they were winning. It did hurt, though. So many people hated me for no reason.