Bad enough I have to write a diary for school. So why did I write another one? To tell the truth …
So I have to write this stupid diary thing for English. You know it’s stupid, Mrs. McKenzie, but you assigned it so you’ll have to read it. And for anybody else I’m supposed to explain the assignment in the first paragraph. Okay. I have to take a special English class because my grades are so bad. I have to write this diary or journal–she said to call it that if it’s easier to think of than a ‘diary’–and thank God for spell-check, I say! Anyway, at the end of every month we’re supposed to turn it in and by the end of the year we can look back and all that stuff. She said some of us will wait to the end of the month and try to put everything down, but it’s better to write a little as it happens. She said we’ll find out what works for us.
It’s my last year of junior high, thank God, and I can’t wait for tenth grade to roll around and high school! Only my grades are bad so I’ve got to clean things up. Yeah, for what? Another dead-end job like the one that killed my old man? Or Mom working long hours at the hospital for low pay? Land of Opportunity, sure …
*
Okay, this is the end of September. I missed three days in the middle of the month. Got even farther behind. The classes all seem dumb to me; the only thing that makes it worth coming is looking at pretty girls. That’s honest, Mrs. McKenzie!
*
Forgot something–I didn’t say my name. Even though it’s on the front of the paper, what the heck. As you know, Mrs. McKenzie, I’m Larry Hanson. There. Oh, and I’m supposed to put in ‘life stuff’. Well, Mom is still on my case about my long hair, my friends, and so what else is new? I’m lucky to have any friends at all. I’m the runt of the litter, as my old man used to say. No matter what I eat, even protein things, I stay small. So I have some friends who watch out for me. Yeah, maybe we get a little rowdy, but, hey, we’re guys, right?
Like the suspension thing. A girl said some rude things to a friend of mine and we told her off. So now we’re the bad guys! If she hadn’t started dissing us nothing would have happened and how come she didn’t get suspended, too?
Me getting suspended did not sit well with Mom. She usually leaves me alone, because she’s either working or too tired to fight, but she does take every chance to yell at me about my hair or my room or whatever. So she went ballistic after the suspension and said the school says I need some counseling. So we went to this therapist that helped her best friend stop smoking and another one lose weight. The hypnosis thing. And big deal, I got bored and went to sleep because she couldn’t hypnotize me. Just a waste of the school’s money and my time! Mom said we’ll try again every week until they get some progress. It’s not gonna happen. They can’t hypnotize me and I’m just getting some extra sleep. Waste of money.
The one cool thing Mom did is make a deal with me. She said she’d get some CDs from my favorite bands, the real metal stuff, hardcore, as long as I went to the therapist. Easy deal! So I get to put on my phones and zone out–maxed out to eleven!–and an extra hour of sleep with the therapist. Like I said, easy deal.
So that’s it for September.
McKenzie said we could write a draft of this journal thing, and she said we can swear and say anything we want as long as it’s honest. Then clean it up and edit and all that stuff and turn it in. Mackie–he’s my best friend, along with Steve–said we’d fry her brain with what we’re really up to! So I thought it might be fun. To do the draft thing with the truth, and then make it all clean and lily-white for McKenzie.
Then I thought, what the heck; why do all the editing and clean-up? I’ll just write Squeaky Clean for McKenzie and Down & Dirty for my own safekeeping. Truth Time. What the heck; it might be interesting to see how the truth of what happened changes over time!
*
The suspension thing sucks big time. Mackie and Steve and me were just checking the babes out at lunch time, and this stuck-up bitch Celia Duran got pissed. We were hanging out at the edge of the school and Celia lives close, I guess, and was walking back from lunch. Mackie was going ‘Celia-feel-ya’ and Steve and me were cracking up. She stops and says something about Neanderthals and Steve says, ‘Shut up, you stupid bitch’ and she didn’t cry, which surprised me, but her face got hard. I’d seen that once before when Heather–one of the Heathers, the one that’s a cheerleader–said something to her and bumped her as she passed. Celia just turned and there was that hard face and I was ten feet away but when I saw that face I still went ‘Whoa!’
So Celia stares down Steve and just said, “You guys are pathetic. Get a life,” or something like that and Mackie just said, “You’re pathetic. You just need a real man.” And she said, “What would you know about that?” and Steve had said something and Mackie had said something so I had to say something so I said, “You just need a good fucking and we’re the ones to give it to you.”
Okay, I’ve never said anything like that but I had to prove myself to the other guys, right? So maybe that was a little over the top, but she did these squinty eyes at me and her mouth worked like she’d swallowed something bad and just said, “Oh, Larry.” Then she walked away.
Mackie turned to me and put his hand over his forehead and went “Oh, Larry!” and Steve said, “She’s such a bitch!” but I wondered what she meant by that, the way she said it. I felt really crappy for some reason.
But Mrs. Olson the cafeteria lady was around the corner and heard us and so we got busted and nothing was done about Celia calling us names but we got suspended for three days.
*
Mom was so pissed, like I’ve never heard her. She was going on and on about my old man and she’d hoped I was better than him and I yelled for her to stop talking about my old man like that, you stupid woman! I almost called her a bitch but stopped at the last moment. She raised her hand to slap me and I don’t know why but she just kind of deflated. Dodged that one!
*
So the school said I had to do some ‘sensitivity counseling’ because I’d threatened Celia with gang-rape. Gang-rape? Geez! We were just talking, you know? Just screwing around. We were mad at her. Mom said the counseling couldn’t hurt, so she began calling around. She found this new-age space cadet named Ms. Belasco, if you can believe that name. Plants all over the office, big weird paintings and sculpture things, and she was in this long dress thing like my grandmother wore called a moo-moo or something. Stupid name.
I just lay on the couch and talked about myself but it was all as clean and lily-white as the stuff I write for McKenzie. Then I fell asleep. I think Mom and I got ripped off, which burns me, but she said the school required it so Belasco’s getting paid by them, I guess. We got some vitamins and a case of a fruit juice supplement. I’m taking the stuff every day and the juice isn’t bad. What the heck; vitamins can’t hurt. Maybe I’ll get bigger and stronger.
*
What I didn’t put in the McKenzie thing was about the CDs Mom got me. I mean, they’re really hardcore metal–way beyond those dinosaurs Metallica! The funny thing is, Mom’s a real straight arrow, never does anything wrong, but she got these bootlegs. I thought she’d go to the store and buy the individual CDs of the bands I asked for but she said they’re too expensive–got that right!–and has a friend that duplicates them. So like I said, she doesn’t mind me listening to them and they’re really great bands. The recording is a little fuzzy but not enough to bother me; I guess it’s part of the bootleg duping process. And I thought, she could afford one CD at the store, but she got ten of ‘em so a little fuzz in the mix can’t hurt! And cranked up, who the hell cares?
I’m doing better in school, I think. Maybe because I’m not spending as much time cutting classes. I started doing the homework because I have to turn it in anyway, because the school said I might not make The Bridge–that’s what they call going into high school–if I don’t make the effort. So it’s actually easier to just show up, listen, do the homework that night, turn it in the next day and forget about it.
*
I’m getting along better with some of the other kids. A friend of mine knocked a girl’s books down by accident and I helped her pick them up. After that some kids seemed nicer to me. I guess it’s like making the effort for the schoolwork.
*
Not a lot to report. No holidays until Halloween. My friends and me will do the usual, just kind of hang out and watch things. We don’t do costumes or anything.
*
Halloween was cool. We just hung out, but we had a scare of our own when some older guys, out of high school, I think, chased us. But we got away and had a good laugh. We found a bag of candy that someone had dropped, too, so we had dessert!
*
And life stuff. Getting along better with Mom. She’s backed off about my hair and even got some special shampoo and some other stuff. So we’re getting along better.
A very weird month. I’m getting so much shit from Mackie about doing my schoolwork, but I had this thought–what if he got busted? I mean, as long as it’s Mackie and Steve and me hanging out, that can go on forever. Who the hell cares about school? But he stole some stuff from a sporting goods store and got away with it, but if he’d gotten caught and went to juvie, I’d be stuck with Steve who is cool but let’s face it, not too bright. But with Mackie gone, what would I do? Nobody likes me. Yeah, I’m the runt of the litter, but hanging with Mackie is two-edged. It protects me from hassle, but nobody wants anything to do with me. Or us. So we just hang together.
I guess that’s why I helped Leslie with her books. Mackie came up and said, “Outta my way, cunt” and she kind of screamed and Steve giggled at that. But she dropped her books she was so freaked, and I was last in line and I don’t know why but I picked up the books because Leslie was standing there shaking. She didn’t say anything but I saw Celia and some other kids looking at us. I got the squinty thing from Celia again. What the hell?
*
I’m not jacking off as much as I used to. Since this is Truth Time, I might as well tell the truth, you know? So, jacking off, well …I never knew if I was any good at it. I never did it as much as Steve says he does–Mackie just laughs–and I’m probably doing it wrong. Maybe I never thought of the right thing. Steve says he thinks of tits and cunts and that’s all it takes. Mackie says Steve’s a walking hard-on. Probably.
Anyway, I’m just not in the mood to do it. Maybe I’m growing up. Like doing the schoolwork and helping Leslie with her books, maybe it’s just part of growing up. Not too bad. But Steve’s getting on my nerves. He’s so fucking stupid! He really is! Last month Celia called us Neanderthals and I googled the thing and she’s probably right, about Steve anyway. I know his mom’s a drunk and I heard something about drunk moms messing up their babies. I don’t know but his isn’t a house to hang out in or ask questions. Especially about being drunk or stupid!
*
I still think about Celia and the squinty-eye thing she does when she looks at me. What’s up with that? I was so mad at her when she got us suspended, but thinking back on it, and her saying ‘Oh, Larry’ in that quiet way, I still get a bad feeling in my stomach. It took me awhile to realize what it is–it’s shame. I never really felt that before. Wait–that’s not true. I felt something like it that when I think about not being a big guy for my old man. This thing with Celia, though …it’s different. Hard. Right to my gut, like the bottom of my spine. Makes me feel crappy and worthless and it’s like being sick to my stomach but I can’t puke it out. It just stays there.
But I had to be tough for Mackie and Steve, right?
*
Halloween–God, we’re lucky to be alive! What we’ve done the last couple of years is hide in trees or bushes, where it’s dark, and find some kid out alone and grab his bag of candy. This year the kid put up a little fight so Mackie pushed him over on his ass and Steve grabbed the bag and we took off, with the kid still crying. Only, when we were back in the bushes, Mackie said I didn’t do shit so I couldn’t get any candy. Steve said I should go stomp the kid or something. They just stared at me.
So I walked to the kid–he was still on his ass, looking at his skinned elbow–and had my back to the bushes so the guys couldn’t hear me. I whispered to the kid, “Those guys want me to stomp you. I’m going to fake it but you need to scream like it really hurts or they’ll come back and really hurt you!” The kid was smart enough to nod, and I recognized he was somebody’s little brother, I forgot who. So I yelled, “You little bastard!” and pulled my foot way back like kicking a football and kicked forward but slammed it into the ground right next to him so it looked like I killed him. The kid’s going to be a great actor; he screamed bloody murder and grabbed his side and bent in two and rolled over. I whispered “Stay down!” and strutted back to the bushes and said, “Give me some goddamned candy, you asshole!” to Mackie who also gave me a squinty-eye thing, like Celia, only this one was different because he grinned with it, and said I was a nasty motherfucker. That’s high praise from Mackie!
Unfortunately, I was right; the kid was somebody’s little brother–of one of the big Mexican families. Montoya or something. And the biggest nasty guy was his brother. Who had buddies. Who were a block away, and on the next street they pulled up in a chopped low-rider and came out fast with silver shiny things in their hands and we ran for our lives. One of the fences had a hole in it small enough for us to scramble through and stopped the big guys who couldn’t fit through–even Mackie barely made it. So they yelled at us in Spanish and we ran for blocks to Steve’s backyard and after we caught our breath we saw that I’d been carrying the candy bag the whole time so I was the hero of the night.
*
But when I got home, I didn’t feel like a hero. I felt like a stupid boy. A dumb, clumsy, loud, sweaty, nasty, mean boy. I almost wanted to cry. And that’s another thing–I feel like crying a lot. Like when I saw a dog that got hit by a car, I teared up. And some movies that I saw. Mom said we should spend ‘quality time’ together according to Belasco. So Mom rents movies or there’s something on TV. I said we could trade, like one night I choose a movie and the next night she could choose a movie like the chick flicks she liked. She knew I’d chose something like House of 1,000 Corpses so she said no to violence which left her chick flicks, I guess.
But the truth is that the chick flicks aren’t bad. We saw some Sandra Bullock things that were kind of fun, with her being a butch FBI agent. Of course, Mom got some teen things, too, because there wasn’t any violence in them. She’s All That was actually pretty good about older kids, and one of those Traveling Pants things that was closer to my own age. Mom explained things about how girls relate to one another because I didn’t really get it at first. They make more sense now, and in fact the way girls relate makes more sense, even though, like Mean Girls, girls can be bitches to one another. I realized that’s what Heather had done to Celia that day I saw her hard face.
*
So after that Halloween scare I decided I wasn’t going to hang with Mackie and Steve as much. It wasn’t the scare as much as the little kid. I was glad that I hadn’t kicked him, and I knew that we deserved being chased by his brother. But everything else just left me feeling very unhappy with myself and I didn’t like the feeling. So the trick will be to not spend as much time with them. I guess I’ll say that Mom’s really on my case because I’m falling behind in school or something and I’ve got to study. They won’t ask any questions about that.
School has been getting more intense this month. We had mid-terms and if I read my online grades right, I got Bs! I’ve never gotten higher than C- in anything! So there’s the reinforcement–a word I’m learning about from the therapist I go to, Ms. Belasco. I need to avoid reinforcing the bad habits, and I’m kind of evaluating my friends and how I relate to them. And I’m reinforcing the good habits, like doing my schoolwork and bonding with Mom.
*
I didn’t mention that before. We have movie nights together and talk about things and there’s nowhere near the yelling we used to do. She’s given me a lot of advice that I used to blow off, but now I’m listening. Like cleansing and stuff. I just feel cleaner than I used to and that’s not even hard to understand.
*
In trying to deal with new friends and old friends, I’ve had some name-calling but anyone as small as I am is used to it. But on the plus side I’m learning that some kids are nicer than I thought. So that’s cool.
*
I’m sleeping better, too. Sign of a clear conscience, Mom teases. But there might be something to it. Last month I wrote about being chased by some big guys at Halloween. I’m not doing things like that and maybe that’s why I’m sleeping better.
*
The therapist is probably helping, too. I still go every week, even though she signed the form that satisfied the school. I usually go to sleep there but lately I think that I’ve actually been ‘under’, so maybe she really is pretty good at hypnosis or whatever she does. Like I mentioned, she’d helped Mom’s friends with smoking and weight loss so she probably is just an all-around helper.
*
For Thanksgiving we’ll be going to my grandmother’s. I should say a little bit about her. She’s my mother’s mother and has been her Rock of Gibraltar, as Mom says. She’s a tough ex-farmer; she sold her farm to one of those big agri-businesses after my grandfather died. She worked with a construction company until retiring. All of this makes her sound butch, but she isn’t–she’s motherly. And grandmotherly! She bakes and sews and her house always smells like cookies and I think Martha Stewart could learn a few things from her! So that’s where we’re going.
*
This is the last night of November. We had a fantastic time with my grandmother. I never really appreciated her before but this year was so different. Maybe because I helped, instead of sitting in the family room watching sports with the rest of the guys–two cousins and an uncle. I decided that my grandmother was working so hard while they sat on their butts, so I helped her. It just seemed to make the food taste better, somehow. Like the cornbread–I’d helped with that so I was proud of it.
It was kind of boring trying to talk with my cousins; all they seemed to know was ESPN. Things were a little awkward with them, but I just ‘rose to the occasion’, as my grandmother likes to say. I felt better about myself doing that, instead of making up things to say to my cousins. My Mom was really proud of me, too.
School really is a lot better when you’re not sitting there without your homework, and you get tests back with good grades. And it’s easier to make friends when you’re not seen as a loser. Part of that was pretty much cutting loose entirely from Mackie and Steve. They said I was pissing them off, and it was mutual but I never said that. I just didn’t like the things they were doing, like egging somebody’s house, or keying somebody’s car, all because they said the people pissed them off. It seemed that everybody pissed them off, and that wasn’t possible, statistically–we’re learning statistics in math–and I realized that those two guys were the ones that were using the pissed-off thing as an excuse to cause some damage. I had to get away from them.
It was when they started making fun of me. It wasn’t just when I bowed out of egging Celia’s house. They called me a chickenshit and crybaby and even a little girl. Everything I did seemed to trigger them; the way I talked, the way I walked, everything. Calling me a little girl wasn’t even the worst of it; I discovered that by overhearing them one day when I was coming around a corner.
I don’t know what Mackie said, but Steve said, “What about Larissa?” and he said it all fruity and I realized from the way he said it that they’d been calling me that for awhile.
Mackie said, “Beats the hell out of me. He’s so …prissy these days. Probably won’t go for it.”
Steve said, “Prissy ain’t the half of it. He’s like a goddamned cop.”
“Prissy cop,” Mackie laughed.
“Like a meter maid,” Steve giggled.
There was a silence from Mackie and Steve said, “What?” and I held my breath. Finally, Mackie said, “That’s exactly like what she is.”
I was chilled but Steve was, as always, slow on the uptake. “Who’s ‘she’?”
“Larissa, you fucking moron,” Mackie said with disgust. “He’s gone girly on us.”
Steve giggled, stopped, and giggled again. “Then maybe we should just fuck the bitch.”
I quietly stepped backward, keeping my eyes on the corner in case they came around it, until I was able to get away without them noticing.
*
When they wanted to egg Celia’s house, it was mostly out of boredom. They had it in for her for some reason; even before the confrontation that got us suspended. But I managed to talk them out of egging her place by diverting them. I said, “You know who really pisses me off? Stan Waterman!” who was one of the jocks, sports hero and all that, but I’d heard some really serious racist crap from him. I knew by now that Mackie just wanted to egg somebody, and I thought it was better to egg a racist than a girl I knew.
Anyway, that was really the last day that we even sort of hung out together. I hoped they’d go for Stan’s place but I really didn’t know if they would consider anything I said. Maybe that was the final straw–plus, I didn’t want to egg Stan’s or Celia’s. When I walked away from them, I felt that I really was walking away. And it felt pretty good.
I told Celia that her house might still be a target, but I wasn’t hanging with Mackie and Steve anymore so I couldn’t help again. She said she was glad I was finally ‘over them’, and it just sounded funny, somehow. Like I was in love with them and we broke up or something. But she surprised me by asking if I wanted to come over after school. At first I thought, ‘Oh, like maybe become a boyfriend or something’ but I didn’t feel like that. I mean, about Celia. Or about any other girl.
Before, like Mackie, I considered guys either cool or losers, and girls were all bitches–and occasionally bee-yotches!–but they weren’t people; they were part of the landscape to be used. Sexually, I mean, like things Mackie always said. In his world, girls existed only to pleasure him sexually. The fact that we were thirteen-and-fourteen-year-olds didn’t enter into it; it was what his old man had said and it kind of resonated with me. I mean, I kind of remember my father saying stuff like that, especially when he fought with Mom. It was funny; I didn’t remember the fights. He was just ‘my old man’, you know? But from little bits here and there I was realizing that life with him had been hell for Mom. And he was a lot like Mackie, or at least Mackie’s dad …so it just seemed that I was going to be that way, too, you know?
So I was re-evaluating everything I knew, basically. Boys, girls, fathers, friends …everything. And Celia seemed like a really nice person. I liked how she’d given Heather the hard look, and although I was embarrassed, I liked that she hadn’t freaked out that day in September, and we sure deserved the hard look. And I deserved the ‘Oh, Larry’ because I guess she was disappointed in me.
That’s what I asked her. I walked home with her–she was so lucky it was just on the other side of a block from school–and we stood in her kitchen having Diet Cokes. I asked her why she’d said that the way she did and she didn’t want to talk about it at first because she said I’d grown so much since then and it was better to forget it. But I persisted, telling her it was important to me, and finally she said that she always liked me, ever since second grade, but then held her hand up and said ‘Not like-like’, and I knew what she meant. She was all worried that she’d hurt my feelings but I really did understand and I told her that. And for some reason I actually relaxed that she didn’t ‘like-like’ me, but liked me.
Celia said that somehow she always thought we could be friends but said she ‘didn’t know how’. There was this weird kind of pause and there was this thing that Mom has said where you could tell that ‘the world was shifting’.
I told Celia that I would like to be friends with her, and not as a boyfriend. She looked me directly in the eyes and smiled, then nodded, then said, “So do you want to tell me what’s going on?” and I said nothing was going on but she said I was changing. She quickly added ‘for the better, way better’ but I just nodded.
So we’re friends but there’s like this question mark floating around.
*
I told Mom about that I was no longer friends with Mackie and Steve, and was getting to be friends with Celia. She said that was wonderful news and I felt wonderful inside when she said that. We were sitting and having tea, something we did on movie nights, but we got to talking before watching The Notebook. Anyway, I told her what they’d said and how they’d treated me like a girl behind my back and she asked how I felt about it. I told her I felt hurt and betrayed and just …burned. Like somehow they’d cheated on me or something.
She didn’t answer for a long time, and then asked how I felt about what they’d said, about being called ‘Larissa’, for instance. I said it hurt because it was like they were making fun of me the way they did with everybody else. I was no longer one of the guys, meaning Mackie and Steve; I was one of them, everybody else, and so I was fair game for ridicule. Mom pursed her lips and said she understood, but how did I feel about being ‘Larissa’?
Finally I understood what she meant and I didn’t have an answer. I hadn’t thought about the name other than a term of scorn, like calling somebody ‘fat boy’ or ‘pizza face’. But Mom meant something more. I told her I really didn’t know, but it had hurt, under the circumstances. Mom smiled and said sometimes the best way to make something hurtful hurt less was through familiarity. I didn’t get it, but she said, “What if …I started calling you Larissa all the time?” I said that would be mean. She said, “Sure, if I said it meanly or sneering, but what if I said, ‘Larissa, time for dinner’ or ‘Larissa, sweetheart? Could you help me with the groceries?’ and I said that that was different. Mom said it could take the sting out of the word and that we should try it and I guess it was okay, at least to get it out of her system.
We watched The Notebook that night, and I was crying. I guess I do that a lot now, but I say it’s the movies that Mom picks. If I cried at Roadkill or something, then I’d be worried! But people in love dying, or people struggling to be together, and that first kiss …who wouldn’t get all misty? But that night I was really sleepy–and weepy–and she volunteered to clean up. She smiled and said, “You go on to wash up for bed, Larissa.” I looked at her a moment and nodded. She was right; it was okay when she said it.
*
I’ve been sleeping like a baby. It’s weird, because I was listening to the most hellacious hardcore metal bands all summer. Then Mom got me the cool bootlegs and for some reason I liked listening to them in bed. I was surprised that Mom didn’t mind, because she had to hear it, even though I had the volume kinda down. And I didn’t mind the bootleg fuzz; after the first week I never really noticed it anymore so low volume was cool, too.
Only …I kinda got turned off on the bands, too. A lot of the lyrics were …well, really cruel. And especially to women. They were like Mackie and Steve, going on about how women only existed to serve men sexually and then would go on about what the girls would do and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was looking around for some other music and Mom made some suggestions for me to explore with iTunes and I was getting into some of the more ‘emo’ bands. At lot of girls and some guys at school were into emo and dressed the part, and a lot more kids liked the music but didn’t do the eyeliner and fingerless-glove things. So they were okay, I guess.
But I also got into some singer-songwriters. Not the weepy, high-pitched whiners like that Blunt guy, but some of the girl singers that were writing about real teen problems and some of the songs made a nice emotional sense, like some of Mom’s movies, and I had to laugh that there was more emotion in their songs than in some ‘emo’ songs! But anyway, Mom said for me to make a list and she’d see what she could do, so by mid-November I got a bunch of new CDs with the artists I’d listed. Bootlegs again, of course, but again it meant I got a lot more than just one store-bought CD. Now, going to sleep was a lot more peaceful and pleasant and I really truly did sleep better.
*
I surprised myself by sticking with Ms. Belasco. Even though I didn’t have to go to her after she’d signed that form for the school, I felt so much better about myself. I mean, there were a lot of reasons I was feeling better. The closeness with Mom, of course, and I was sleeping better, eating better–mostly salads, yogurt, whole grains and juices–and taking vitamins and I’d even thought about some kind of exercise, maybe swimming. I mentioned it to Mom who thought it was perfect, since I was kind of a loner, and it was such a healthy exercise, but I was kind of ashamed of my body. I was used to it being small and I was used to being shorter than some of the girls in my class, but I had been getting kind of pudgy. Kind of soft. Too much couch time, I told Mom, who just smiled.
But Ms. Belasco was so calming and soothing, although I still had no idea what she was saying. Or what I was saying, but every time she’d say that ‘our session went wonderfully’ and I’d say thank you and still have no idea–but I did feel wonderful, and I didn’t want that feeling to end.
*
Something else that didn’t end was Mom calling me Larissa. She’d been right, as usual. I didn’t mind the name any more–in fact I liked it; it was a special bond between her and me. And I made up my mind in November to tell Ms. Belasco about it. She asked how I felt about it, which is what I’d expect. Then I fell asleep as usual and felt great when I woke up, so when she asked me if she could call me Larissa, ‘just between us’, I felt so good I said sure. And I did feel good about it.
*
I did not feel good about Thanksgiving. Scratch that. Some parts of Thanksgiving were fantastic. Others, not so much. The not-fantastic parts were my stupid cousins and uncle. They’re so macho, just going on about sports and cars, so if there was a commercial on ESPN they’d click over to The Speed Channel and go on and on. Every so often my older cousin, Tommy, would ask what I thought and I’d say, ‘yeah, it’s cool’ but got caught once when they were asking what I thought about a terrible crash at one of the races. Then they realized I hadn’t been listening. So I told them I was kinda hungry and was going to see how long before dinner.
That got me out of the TV room and into the kitchen, where my grandmother and Mom were bustling around getting the spread ready. My Aunt Cheryl–Mom’s sister–had been killed by a drunk driver and this was the second Thanksgiving without her, but the first with my uncle and cousins. I thought that with my blood relative aunt out of the picture–to put it coldly–I didn’t really have any connection with the macho jerks in the TV room. And that was okay with me.
I said the guys wanted to know when dinner was ready but phrased it so Mom and Gram knew I was the messenger and didn’t yell at me. I asked if I could help and they exchanged a look. Gram said she had an apron somewhere and fished around in a drawer and pulled out a barbecue apron that had grease stains all over it. Washed and clean, but stained. All three of us made a face and kind of laughed at that, and then Gram snapped her fingers and walked into the TV room and grabbed the TiVo remote and froze the image–of a really ugly quarterback sack–and the guys moaned. She held up the remote and said, “Oh, knock it off; you can rewind it, or whatever this gadget does. This will only take a moment. Dinner will be in one hour from now. Danny, what time is it?”
My younger cousin said, “Huh? Oh. An hour from now.”
Tommy bonked him on the shoulder. “Not what she asked, dummy.”
Gram said, “Thomas, don’t call your brother a dummy.” She looked at Danny and said, “Now, dummy, answer the question. What time is it?”
My uncle and Tommy laughed.
“Oh!” Danny said. “I thought you asked ….yeah. Um …six-fifteen?”
“So dinner will be ready when?”
“Um …seven-fifteen?” he said, not brightly.
Gram nodded. “Got that, you?” My uncle and Tommy nodded. “We’re working our tails off in there and Larry’s been drafted to do some heavy lifting for us. So we don’t want to be disturbed. Got that? If you wander into the kitchen, for a soda, or a cookie, or to ask a question, it will only delay dinner. And you will be put to work–and that will mean no more TV. Do you want dinner delayed?”
All three dutifully shook their heads and said, no, ma’am.
Gram said, “So the kitchen is off limits. You eat in sixty minutes if you stay out. Enjoy the game.” And she handed the remote to my uncle and closed the pocket door to the kitchen, then the two side doors. I had never noticed there was a latch on the pocket door, but we were closed off from the guys and their noise.
“Incredible, Mom,” said my mom.
I asked what Gram needed lifting and she laughed and said nothing; she thought I wanted to help. I told her I did and she went back to the drawer and got another apron out, yellow and white and definitely a woman’s apron. Gram said, “That backyard barbecue one was your granddad’s favorite, and I just didn’t have the heart to throw it out. But it just doesn’t fit our lovely kitchen. Is this okay with you, sweetheart?” She meant the apron.
For some reason, I felt proud to put it on …or actually have my mother tie it for me. I was now part of the crew, the meal preparers, the providers …all sorts of weird thoughts went through my head while I stirred or sifted or measured or whatever. I learned a lot, especially about how to make cornbread, which was nearly all done by me–with their directions, of course.
At ten after seven Mom untied my apron and Gram unlatched the pocket door but we kept getting things ready. Mom set the table and I watched; she told me how and why she was doing it because there were more of everything on the table–silverware, glasses, plates–than any other day of the year. The guys came stomping in, grumbling about one of the games and talking a mile a minute. Gram made them go back and wash and by the time they got back everything was on the table.
We said Grace and said what we were thankful for. When it came to me, I said I was thankful for my family–looking only at Mom and Gram–and for getting my grades up. Danny snorted at that and got hit by my uncle. Danny said he was grateful that some guy broke his leg and couldn’t throw for Dallas, which earned him a threatening hit from his uncle who said, “Oh, Dallas; that’s okay then!” and all three guys laughed. Tommy said he was thankful for Jenny Smithson going out with him. Danny snickered and my uncle harrumphed and said he was thankful for family. Easy out. Mom said rather than being thankful, she was sad that her sister wasn’t there to be with us, which served to sober up my uncle and cousins. Gram didn’t say what she was thankful for, but gave an old Irish toast that was kind of funny and almost blasphemous and we all chuckled and ate.
I watched ‘my’ cornbread get devoured and felt proud for my part in making it, and angry when Danny took a little piece of cornbread and flicked it at Tommy, which earned him another hit from my uncle and that earned him a reprimand from Gram. It looked like it was spiraling out of control so I loudly asked Tommy what was Jenny like and that got him going and got everybody off the food-flick and the hits.
The guys almost ran back to the TV after a few loud burps and mumbled thank yous and I started clearing the table. Mom gave my arm a squeeze and I felt great doing it. Then, really rudely, my uncle showed up at the kitchen door zipping his jacket. “TV said roads are icing up; I’m going to beat it back home with the guys before it gets hairy. Thanks again, Mom. Really tasty. Guys?” And despite Gram’s stern face, he turned away. Each of the two cousins stared at the kitchen floor as they got their jackets on and dully said thanks and then they all left. Left us with a zillion dishes and the TV still blaring!
All three of us looked at each other. Gram said, “If the roads are icing up you’d better get going, honey,” but Mom looked at me and said, “No, Mom. If they’re icing up we’re staying put, but more importantly–” And I interrupted and said, “More importantly we’re not going to desert you like this. Where do you want these plates?”
*
It felt really, really good to help clean up and we got everything in the washer or put away. I wore my apron and got splashed at one point so it was a good thing that I had it, but my shirt still got kind of wet. When I took the apron off I didn’t notice the damp part, but we went to the TV room and Mom found a Thanksgiving special with a lot of stars. I sat on the couch next to Mom, with my legs tucked under me the way I’ve been doing it lately, and shivered slightly and that’s when we discovered that my shirt was wet.
Gram left and came back with a yellow robe. I stripped off my shirt and handed it to her and put on the robe and Mom told me it was chenille and it was warm because all I had on were my pants and no shirt, but the robe made it fine. But it reminded Mom that we were spending the night and we hadn’t packed because we’d planned to go back home. She kind of made a face at the thought of me sleeping in my clothes.
Gram said quietly, “I don’t have any young man’s pajamas; the last time anybody slept over they were little guys. I have an idea, and it might be kind of fun, but I want you to approve,” she said, looking at me. I said, “Why me?” and Mom hugged me saying she thought she knew what Gram was up to. Gram had left again and came back with a small pile of clothes.
“This is my idea. I only have nightgowns because that’s what I sleep in. And I only had Cheryl and your mother, so I still have some of their nightgowns.” She looked at Mom. “Remember that baby blue nightie you loved so much?”
“With the ducks?” Mom gasped.
Gram grinned. “With the ducks.” She pulled one out of the pile. “Quack-quack!”
Mom made a little ‘ooh!’ sound and took the folded nightgown with two hands and put her cheek into it and inhaled. “Same sachet,” she said as Gram nodded. Turning to me she said, “This was my all-time favorite nightie. So soft and I slept so well …” Her face changed slightly. “Before growing up and high school and boys and all that silliness. Your aunt Cheryl and I spent so much time in these.” She looked fondly at the nightie.
I said, “So you’ll sleep in that?”
Gram tut-tutted. “Oh, it’d be much too small. I have this for your mother,” she said, pulling a white lacy nightgown out. “Never been worn. Much too sexy for an old lady like me,” she grinned.
Mom took that nightgown and opened it up and declared it beautiful.
I was waiting for whatever I was going to wear when I realized. “Oh …you mean …”
Mom turned to me, still holding the white nightie over one arm but treasuring the blue one. “Honey, there’s nobody here to be embarrassed about. Nobody will see you. I can almost guarantee you a good night’s sleep, warm and safe …” She looked to the blue nightgown.
“Mom, I’d be …honored to wear it,” I said, my voice sounding funny in my ears.
She handed the nightie to me and then hugged me. She whispered, “Oh, Larissa, you make me so proud of you!”
I got the strangest feeling, like a Christmas Eve-type of excitement.
Gram said, “Why don’t we all get ready for bed, get washed and all but don’t brush your teeth. Come back here and watch all these silly stars and I’ll make hot buttered rum!”
I followed Mom to her old bedroom, still with two beds, and knew we’d be sleeping as she and her sister had. Mom went into the bathroom first and came out, her face shiny, wearing the white nightgown and a robe open. She looked lovely and Gram was right–it was almost a sexy gown. Now it was my turn. I went in and washed up and used the same stuff she did because it was right there on the sink. I’d been cleansing and moisturizing for weeks now, and always felt better at bedtime with clean skin. I stripped, peed, and then faced the nightie.
I didn’t want to wear it because I’m a boy, yeah …but I really, really wanted to wear it! I found there were panties folded in it, so I put them on and then slid the nightie over me and it was really just like a big t-shirt, sort of, but was warm and soft and already I felt great.
I opened the door and came out and Mom’s eyes teared up immediately. She rushed to me and said, “Oh, sweetie, you’re so …you look so …”
I looked her in the eye. “You can say it, Mom.” I swallowed. “I want you to say it!”
She was on the verge of crying as she said, “Oh, Larissa, you’re so pretty!”
And I felt absolutely wonderful hearing it!
*
Gram had made hot buttered rum and I got some and loved it. I mean, real stuff, with the rum! Well, just a ‘splash’ in mine, Gram chuckled. But it was delicious and it warmed me and made me feel cuddly. We all snuggled together on the couch with our mugs in front of us to watch the TV but first I had something to say.
“Gram,” I started cautiously. “I …Mom and I have a …thing between us. Just between us.” I didn’t think about Ms. Belasco just then. “Um, some guys …” and I told her the story of overhearing Mackie and Steve. She smiled and listened. I finished with, “So I’d kinda like it if …if at least tonight, you would call me Larissa.”
My wonderful grandmother said, “I’d be honored, sweetheart. But only if you do one thing for me. No, two things.”
“Name them.”
“First, would you get up and walk to the kitchen?”
I did that and turned. “Yes? And what do you need from the kitchen?”
“Nothing, Larissa; I changed my mind. Thanks, sweetie. You can come back now.”
I did that and just before sitting, she said, “And the second thing is, maybe for a little bit you might snuggle up with me the way you do with your mom? It was making me kinda lonely,” she said, but I knew she was kidding.
So I tucked my legs under me and leaned against her. She put her arm around me and squeezed and said, “I love you, Larissa. You’re so pretty. And I’ve got a confession to make–I sent you to the kitchen just so I could see you walk in that pretty nightie!”
*
Mom and I were quiet on the drive back the next morning. The roads had been icy but were okay now. We’d had a late start, a long wonderful night’s sleep and breakfast in our nighties and robes and my clothes had been washed and dried so I put them on but felt a sense of …loss, or something. That’s kind of why I was quiet on the drive back, thinking. I realized it was the first night in a long time that I hadn’t had my CDs playing, but I didn’t miss them because Mom and I had talked for a little bit when we got into our beds.
Now, in the car, I finally broke the silence. “Mom, do you think I’m weird if I said that …well, I liked helping in the kitchen, even the apron, and it was so nice wearing your old nightgown, and except for my stupid uncle and cousins, it was a really good time?”
She glanced at me and back to the road. “Not at all, sweetie.” She paused and said, “Something on your mind? Do you want to talk about it?”
I looked out the window, not trusting myself to look at her. “Maybe, kind of …I was kind of thinking that …well, I slept really good. Maybe it was the rum, but …would it be too weird if I got some kind of night shirt?”
She nodded. “Not weird at all. I think it suits you. Tell you what. We’ll look through the catalogs at home. Save a lot of gas and footwork.”
And embarrassment, I thought. Because I knew what I really wanted–I wanted a nightgown.
End of Part 1
Bad enough I have to write a diary for school. So why did I write another one? To tell the truth …
This is strange to be writing at the end of the month when it’s also the end of the year. I guess that’s something we’ll talk about in class when school starts in January, although we don’t discuss the diaries or journals we write.
There were three weeks of school and I worked hard to get everything finished. I got a good grade on a science project, I know, and it’s the first time I actually worked in a group and we all did well. Nobody ever wanted to be grouped with me before, because I …well, I never did anything. I sat back and sneered at the others because I thought it was ‘cool’–that’s what I’d learned from friends of mine. Well, I’ve been un-learning things and now I think that maybe they just were scared of trying and not doing well, so they wouldn’t try and they’d just ridicule the kids that tried.
Since it’s the end of the year, there’s a lot of re-thinking I’m doing and I think that in just this first semester I’ve kind of turned myself around. I hope so.
*
I’m actually getting some new friends now. That sounds like I’m going out and buying them! I mean, I guess that because I’m a different person now I’m meeting kids like for the first time, and some are becoming friendly. But I’ve been invited to a few kids’ houses, and to the mall, which is a lot more fun than my old friends ever said–they always used to say the mall was for losers. Well, the mall is not for losers, and it’s a lot more fun than my old friends ever were.
*
Still getting along with Mom really well so I don’t think it’s just temporary. We have a pretty solid foundation now, and the Thanksgiving with my grandmother was really special. Just thought I’d throw that in.
*
Also still seeing my therapist, basically because everything’s going so much better and I don’t want to mess things up. She said that maybe we should cut down how often I come, to start ‘weaning’ myself, like I’m a kitten or something! Maybe she’s right, but if it helps, and I like it, there’s no harm in continuing, right?
*
I was really bummed out that I didn’t have any money to get something for Mom. It’s never bothered me in the past, but that was the old me. I talked with my grandmother about it and she offered to give me some money before Christmas. See, she’s just sent money the last few years. I thought it was because it was easier for her, but she finally told me it was because I didn’t seem to have any interests, I wasn’t thankful for anything she’d gotten me in the past, and overall I guess I just wasn’t very nice and she didn’t feel like making an effort to shop for me. So she came up with the idea of giving me this year’s money early, and I’d use it to get things for Mom. Gram told me not to expect any money this year, though, and I said of course not. But I got cash from her in the middle of the month, wrapped up in a card. That way there was no check so Mom wouldn’t know, and I could shop for her right away!
*
I got some nice presents for Mom, some really neat aromatherapy bath salts and a pretty scarf and some other stuff. I also used some of the money for Gram and got her some bath stuff, too, as a special thank you for slipping me my Christmas present earlier! Oh, and for Christmas I got some clothes and some magazines and stuff.
*
It snowed Christmas week–but you know that!–and Mom and I basically stayed at home, avoided the malls except for once, and watched a lot of movies. And eggnog! I discovered I like eggnog!
*
Watched the Dick Clark New Year’s thing with Mom. Even though he’s gone now, Mom said it’ll always be the ‘Dick Clark Rockin’ New Years’s Eve’ thing to her. There were some cool bands I’d never heard of, and she’ll get me some of their CDs if she can. Last year I was out with my old friends and didn’t have a good time. I know the new year is going to be better than last year!
There’s a real change in me. Not just me, but my whole world. First of all, I’m still getting good grades and I don’t know why that had never been important to me but now it is. The big thing was, well, the school’s big on groups. It’s supposed to ‘prepare us for the workplace’, where everybody works in groups, I guess. Mom doesn’t at the hospital–well, a group of nurses, maybe?–but maybe other places do it.
I used to get put in groups and hear the other kids groan when I was named and I hated them for that. Mackie always said they were losers; they did groups because they couldn’t solve the problem on their own. That made sense to me at the time, so I never ‘contributed’–a big word for teachers. And my groups never did well, and that seemed to prove Mackie was right.
But of course he was wrong; we just never thought that three could solve what two couldn’t, or–and this was the big newsflash for me–it wasn’t the project that we were being taught, it was how to be a group. Come on, how a frog’s leg twitches isn’t that vital (except to the frog!) and can be done with one kid and a gadget. But in a group you have to divide things up and you discover that you’re good at some things and bad at others, and hate some things and like others. And we got a good grade–an A-!
So Mackie was wrong about that, too.
*
Mackie was putting together a new group of his own. I’d withdrawn, of course. From time to time I’d see him or Steve and they’d sneer and call me Larissa but you know what? Mom was right and the word had no power over me anymore. It just reminded me of those special, happy times with my mother so I didn’t even blink when they said it. After the first few times they stopped saying it because they didn’t get any reaction from me, and then they just stopped talking to me.
Steve was missing from school and there was a buzz. Apparently he’d fallen and broken something but the details were murky. Actually, they were wildly varied and almost all wrong. I walked up to Mackie to get his version, and then Mom checked at her hospital, and the truth was that Steve and ‘unknown other individuals’ (meaning Mackie) had been attempting to break into a video game store by going through a skylight. It was an older renovated building; I knew it well and had spent a lot of lost time there with Mackie and Steve.
So they were on the roof, not knowing about motion sensor alarms. They saw the cop lights coming and Steve panicked and fell through the skylight into the store! Mackie couldn’t help him–or was chicken–and got off the roof in the back and ran away. The lights came on automatically when Steve’s ‘motion’ was detected (falling through the roof onto display racks will do that) and the cops saw it through the front window, which I guess gave Mackie time to get away.
Steve was pretty badly messed up, Mom said, with a broken arm and leg and the other ankle, crushed ribs and some internal injuries. And a whiplash sort of neck injury. Meaning that he was pretty much out of the picture for the rest of the school year.
Which left Mackie to get new followers, because that’s what I realized we were, Steve and me–just followers to Mackie. I’d thought we were three buddies, equals, through thick and thin and all that, but I saw that he was a strong-willed guy able to get weak-willed guys to follow him. And of course, robbing the video store was his idea; Steve couldn’t even spell ’video store’.
All of which made me ashamed that I’d ever hung out with them, but I had to watch with some sick fascination as Mackie cruised the halls of school and the comic book and video stores, like an evil magnet, trying to attract any weaklings. Maybe it was because I was proud of my new Science grade that I was thinking about magnets, but it seemed to make sense.
*
There also seemed to be some magnetism with me and Celia–or Celia and I, maybe, now that I’m concerned about doing better in English?–but not the way people usually mean. There wasn’t a speck of romantic attraction for me with her, and I was pretty sure it was the same for her. We’d agreed to be friends, and we are friends, and getting to be good ones, too, I think. Real ones, not like Mackie and Steve.
The magnetism analogy–another English word!–makes sense, too, because we’re always coming up to each other to tell things to one another, like Steve got hurt or there’s a hard test in Math or did I know that Jeremy and Tricia are going steady? It was new, it was fun, and I always felt a warm happiness sharing things with her. I went over to her house a lot, now, and met her mom. Her mom gave me a funny look the first time we met, and I think it was because she thought I might be boyfriend material until she met me. But she saw how we got along and was pretty neat.
Through Celia I got to know some other kids, too. I’d already gotten friendly with Molly Chen in my Science group. She’d glared at me when I was named to the group because she knew I never did anything, but I convinced her that was the old me, and after we got our A- she said she liked the new me. We’d walk the halls and chat about things sometimes. And then Celia saw me one day and waved me over. There were two other girls: Monica, that we call Mon, and is a giggly red-head; and Heather C–we call her that to distinguish between her and the cheerleader Heather. Well, we drop the ‘C’ and just call her Heather, who is gorgeous with straight black hair and creamy white skin. I thought that I could cleanse and moisturize until I was a hundred and never have skin as clear as hers. I should mention, too, that Celia is gorgeous, too, with wavy dark brown hair with red highlights and green eyes.
I never wrote what she looks like before. Weird.
Anyway, they were all excited about the Winter Ball and there was this awkward moment on Heather and Monica’s faces when Celia pulled me in but she confirmed that I wasn’t going–she knew this but wanted the others to know–and then asked about a couple of boys that were slow to ask. For some reason, Monica hadn’t been asked yet and was getting nervous.
I put Mon at ease by telling her the truth, that Rick Fairchild wanted to ask her out but wasn’t sure she’d say yes. I told them that guys would rather not ask at all, than risk rejection. She wanted Rick to ask her and asked us about him and we all said, yeah, he’s great, so I said I’d see what I could do. I don’t really know the guy, but if it’ll help Mon, I’ll try to find a way. And I complimented her on her cute outfit. That earned me another awkward silence and then Celia took control and asked if I wanted to come with her and pick out dresses? She was going to the Ball with Stan (The Man) Reasoner, a football star, and I said sure so we set a time after school that Wednesday.
*
Wednesday I went to the mall with Celia and her mother; we met Monica there. She was buzzing because Rick Fairchild had just asked her out and I got a hug from her. She pulled away and looked a little weird, but something on Celia’s face made her relax.
We had a great time and for some reason it didn’t bother me to go into the teen girls’ stores and boutiques. I guess it was because I’ve been learning that girls are people, and girls like Celia are darned fine people, too. Her mom took my presence in stride, but at one point she sat outside because her feet were tired and I thought it’d be nice to give her company so I joined her.
She leaned over and said, “So …you’re gay, right?”
Nobody had ever asked that and it had never come up, so I was stuck for an answer. She went on to say it was okay, of course and she could see that I was a genuine good friend to her daughter Celia. All I could say, finally, was, “I don’t know what I am” and it was true, and that was a shock to me!
After that, Celia pulled me aside to ask what was wrong and I told her that something was on my mind that I’d tell her about later but everything was fine between us. Monica came up and suggested the piercing place next, because it had all sorts of jewelry and also scarves and things. We went and I was asked my opinion about things. As the girls burrowed in and sorted through the sparklies, I looked around and realized I was the only boy in there. It didn’t bother me like it might. I guess that’s growing up.
*
At home that night I told Mom what Celia’s mom had asked and we talked about homosexuality and all sorts of other things and it became obvious that there are way more variations than just gay or straight, male or female. It gave me something to think about and talk about with Ms. Belasco. We talked for a long time and then I guess she put me under because there was that refreshed and happy feeling at the end of the session.
*
I called my grandmother out of the blue to talk, something I’d never done, and she said she was so proud of the way I was developing and I was happy for that. We got to talking about this and that and I mentioned being bummed out that I didn’t have a job, so I didn’t have money, so I couldn’t get something nice for Mom. Gram came up with this cool scheme where she gave me my Christmas present early–it had been money the last few years–so I had cash to spend on Mom! She chuckled and said to not expect any more cash for Christmas and I said that was fine for me. I got to shop for Mom, and also got something for Gram and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually gotten her something! Shame on me!
*
Celia called me after Winter Ball. The day before, she told me she wouldn’t be able to hang out with me because she’d have to spend the whole day getting ready …salon, nails, the works. The girls were making a group thing of it, and it sounded like fun and I said so. Celia gave me a funny look when I said that and I stammered something and she squeezed my arm and said she’d call me after she got home from the Ball.
She did, about 11:30; I’d cleared it with Mom. I lay in my bed, the phone cradled on my shoulder and pillow, and we talked for almost an hour. She gave me a full account of the day at the salon, what she had done, some funny things when the girls were getting ready–including cheap hairpiece follies!–and then told me about the night.
I was so glad to hear that Monica had a good time and Rick seemed a perfect gentleman, as did Stan the Man–and we giggled because even Celia thinks of him as Stan the Man! And she told me about seeing Monica get a goodnight kiss from Rick, and the smile on her face, and then told me about her goodnight kiss and I got all warm and even gasped a little. She said she hated the night to end, but talking with me made it better and we said goodnight.
That night I had a strange dream. I guess it made sense that it arrived when it did, but I was being escorted to a limo, holding the hand of a cute guy. My other hand held up the skirt of my gown, and I caught a glimpse of a pretty face in the limo’s windows. It was curls and shiny lipstick and sparkly eyeshadow, and it was me.
*
Got some aromatherapy bath salts for Mom and Gram, and some cheap jewelry and a nice scarf from Claire’s, and I made a really pretty card for her and for Gram so it felt like a really great Christmas! When the real Christmas rolled around, you should have seen Mom’s face light up! It was so worth it. And I got some presents, too, including matching scarf and mittens set, a neat woolen knitted cap, and a dazzling assortment of nightgowns! Mom said since I was into the names of things, I learned the difference between a sleep shirt and a chemise and a nightgown and baby dolls, because I got one of each. I blushed at the baby dolls, but Mom smiled and said they were for extra special occasions, and I said that Christmas night was an extra special occasion!
Believe it or not, they weren’t my first choice, because Gram played a language trick on me. She said to not expect any more money, and she was true to her word–but she’d never said anything about presents! She gave me a variety pack of sweet-smelling soaps …and the blue nightgown with the ducks! Mom’s nightie! So that was my first choice to wear, but I wanted to keep it as a memento and not wear it. Mom said she understood and reached out and stroked my hair.
*
Speaking of hair, I’ve been taking really good care of it but it’s still growing so Mom took me to a salon that Ms. Belasco recommended. She said they’d know what to do with the hair of ‘boys like me’ so I guess that meant boys with really long hair. The stylist was named Lucy and was very sweet, even when she playfully scolded me for so many split-ends. When she was done my hair was still long but looked neater loose or in a boy’s ponytail, like I kept it in school.
*
So Christmas night, I wore the baby dolls and a new chenille robe of my very own, and we curled up with eggnog and watched It’s A Wonderful Life for like the 47th time but I was bawling my eyes out at the end and Mom hugged me and rocked back and forth. It was a lovely Christmas moment.
*
About the nightgowns: When we’d come back from Gram’s at Thanksgiving, I’d told Mom that I wanted maybe a sleep shirt and she got me one, a soft gray one with a v-neck. It was really just an oversized t-shirt but I loved it and that’s what I slept in for the few weeks before Christmas, even after Mom pointed out that a lot of kids, boys and girls, sleep in boxers and a t-shirt, but it just didn’t feel like I wanted to. I just liked the sleep shirt.
The only thing was, sitting on the couch in the baby doll set, I looked at my legs and saw they were just a little scruffy. Mom said they looked fine but I could remove the hair if I wanted to. I said I didn’t want to shave my legs–it just seemed weird, somehow–but she had a bottle of stuff that would remove the hair, and said that Olympic swimmers and bicyclists used it. So the night after the day after Christmas, I took a bath and then a shower and used the stuff that she’d mentioned and my legs felt wonderful and looked so pretty with my nightgown. I used some under my arms, too, even though there wasn’t really anything under there. But it was all part of feeling clean.
*
Oh, and I got some new CDs from Mom with the new music that I’d learned about and they’re really great to sleep to! And I found some even newer bands on New Year’s Eve with the Dick Clark special, and she said she’d try to get those, too. We even danced a little to the music on the TV and then flopped on the couch, laughing, and did hot buttered rum but without the rum for me, darn it!
Back to school was the best I remember because I’d gotten good grades last semester and had new friends, too. In Science I got grouped with some kids and they didn’t put up any fuss about having me. In fact, I got invited to a birthday party at the Roller-Rama. The party was lots of fun although there was some hassle when one of my old friends tried to get in but couldn’t. But all in all we had a good time.
*
January is kind of a dead month for everything from TV schedules to trees, so it was a good time to dig into the new semester and get ahead in my schoolwork. One of my teachers said that at the rate I’m going, I might be eligible for the Honors program next year!
*
I hung with my new friends on weekends and that’s about it. Oh, and our school won the basketball championship, but then, you knew that, Mrs. McKenzie!
There is definitely something going on with me. I’m eating healthy and doing exercises at home and I’m still kind of …well, not pudgy but just soft. Even though I feel like I’m growing up, I look even younger, if that’s possible. Mom said we’d see a new doctor later this month.
*
It was great starting school again. I found that my friends hadn’t forgotten me over the holidays. Oh, I knew Celia was still my friend. She’d called me the night of the Winter Ball and told me all about it, what she and the other girls had worn, what the boys were like, especially Stan the Man and Rick. But Heather C and Monica walked with me, too, and a couple of times we even had lunch together!
In Science Molly Chen asked to be in my group, which was really wonderful of her since she’d hated the thought at the start of the school year. And Molly had no problem walking with me in the halls without anybody staring or saying anything and I realized it was because she was kind of invisible. I’d been invisible before I started hanging out with Mackie so I knew something about it, and now that I was a ‘good kid’, I guess I was kind of invisible, too. Molly and I got in the habit of having lunch together.
*
Molly invited me to her birthday party at the Roller-Rama and it was, well, kind of sparsely attended. There were a lot of Chen cousins and other Asian families there, but I think they knew her parents and not Molly so much. There were five of us from school, counting me, and all girls, but I didn’t mind, not even when I got white skates from the rental guy. It just didn’t matter, you know? We all skated and laughed and fell down and laughed and had a great time–
Until Mackie tried to crash the place. It turned out that he didn’t know what was going on or who was in there. It wasn’t like he wanted to be part of Molly’s party; he just wanted to mess things up for whoever was having a good time. We were at the tables, laughing over cake, when we heard some shouts and then some scuffling and looked to the front door to see Mackie being shoved out by a burly Security guy. Mackie was shouting curses and about ‘It’s a free country, fucker!’ and all that and somehow he saw me, all the way through the length of the rink. He pointed at me and shouted, ‘Hey! You let faggots in here!’ and about then the Security guy had another guy with him and they threw Mackie out and the cops had already been called.
Nobody said anything about it; I truly don’t think they connected Mackie’s shout to me–but Molly did. She reached out and squeezed my hand and said softly so only I could hear, “It’s okay, Larry.”
*
Here’s the weird thing. I was on the very edge of telling Molly, “My name’s Larissa” but I pulled back, and at first I thought it was because I didn’t want to be found out. About, well, how soft I’m getting. But at home that night, talking with Mom, I realized that it was also because it was Molly’s party and the day was supposed to be about Molly, not about me. Mom pointed out that maybe my friendship with Celia also kept me from saying it, since if anybody outside of Mom and Gram was going to be allowed to call me Larissa, it would be Celia.
*
I lay in bed that night wondering what was happening. All along I’d been talking about being ‘soft’, of getting ‘soft’–in fact, just before I split with Mackie and Steve, they’d said I was getting ‘soft’, but they meant not hard and brutal like they were. So it came to me that I wasn’t becoming soft …well, yeah, my skin was soft and young like I’d said, but I was becoming feminine. Or maybe I was discovering that I was feminine all along and had been trying to hide it under an outer layer of toughness?
I got out of bed, the hem of my pretty nightie dropping around my knees, and went to find Mom. She was at her desk, doing bills, and I asked her point-blank, “Mom, I think I’m becoming feminine. Are you going to be mad at me?” and she smiled–I think with tears–and reached out to hug me and stroke my hair as she told me she loved me no matter what. We went to the couch and held hands and talked. It was funny, but part of the time we’re having this heavy discussion, I was looking at my fingernails wondering how they’d look with nail polish!
Mom said that she’d noticed a change in the last few months and we both agreed it was definitely for the better, and she asked me would being feminine be a bad thing? I said if I was a boy, sure, but if I was a girl–I meant deep down–then it would be no problem. She said that there were very feminine boys, and I’d seen a few on TV and once at the mall, but it seemed to me to be only a halfway solution, at least for me. Maybe it was fine for them, but as much as they swung their hips or bent their wrists or put on eyeliner, it was a very different feeling from sitting on the couch with my mother, crying at movies while I’m wearing a nightgown.
We agreed on that point, and Mom said would it be so terrible if I was feminine? Even, if I was a girl? I started to say I wasn’t so it made as much sense as saying ‘What if I was an Eskimo?’ but I didn’t say that; instead, I had to admit that, no, my best and truest friends were girls, and there was very little difference in doing things that boys did or girls did, like rock climbing or being astronauts or whatever, out in the world. It was how they related to the world that was different, and between what I knew about boys–besides Mackie and Steve, and even nice guys like Rick and Stan–and what I now knew and was learning about girls, I preferred the way girls related to the world, hands down. It was the way I related to the world.
Mom nodded and smiled and said she’d have to agree, but then, she was a girl. “But would it be so awful, sweetheart,” she asked softly, “to be my daughter?”
And I had to say no, of course not but inside my heart leapt and that was strange. I said, “Mom, you know, there’s an awful lot of similarity between boys and girls, because they’re just people. I mean, duh, but they both eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, go to school, love their parents, have friends, whatever …it’s just the kind of things they do differently.”
She didn’t know what I meant, so I said, “Like clothes and stuff. Like …” I decided to go with my feelings. “Like I’ve been sitting here while we were holding hands and I wondered how my fingers would look with nail polish, and I know that that’s a girl thought, not a boy thought.”
She nodded and said that was true but left the thought hanging.
I said, “I think the way I think about things is kind of like a girl already. I mean, I don’t know exactly what it’s like inside Celia’s head.”
“Nobody ever knows, despite what people will tell you,” she reassured. “You have to compare with what they seem to be feeling and saying. That’s kind of how you pick your friends, too, boys or girls.”
It was my turn to nod. “Uh-huh. And Celia and I seem to think the same. Molly Chen, too; I mean, Molly and I think alike. And the guys at school …I just don’t get. Yeah, I’m totally over Mackie and guys like that, but good guys, like Rick Fairchild, Stan the Man, Drew Peterson, they’re just regular, good guys, you know?”
“Not your friends, though?”
“That’s just it. They’re friendly, because they’re good guys, but I just don’t get them. They say things and do things and I think, I’d never say or do that or think to do it. Like with my cousins. Danny’s a bit of a dip but Tommy’s sort of okay, but it’s not just ESPN …I just can’t relate to them on any level.” I thought back to Thanksgiving and frowned. “Not on any level.”
Mom nodded slowly and asked, “Is there anybody you do relate to?”
“You know the answer already. I relate to you, to Gram, to Celia and Molly and Heather and Mon …” I trailed off, thinking about who I talked to in the halls, outside of having to talk to someone in class. “And they’re all pretty close, but I also chat with …let’s see …Bonnie and Mary Rodgers and Felicity and Melanie and Nicole …”
Mom nodded. “Do you notice a pattern?”
“Geez, Mom, of course I do! But it’s weird, don’t you think? I’ve gone from zero friends to a dozen or more, but they’re all girls.”
“And?”
She wasn’t making it easy. “And …” I continued. “And all of that is in spite of being a boy. Being Larry. But if I was Larissa …”
I trailed off, because I was stunned. I’d never put it in words before, and it was a staggering thought. Why had I never thought this before–it was so obvious!
“If I was Larissa, it would all make sense. All of my friends …and how I feel about them …” I blushed. “And how I feel about boys …” My blush deepened. “As people, I mean …” I shut up before I got in any deeper.
Mom didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she took a deep sigh. “So what do you want to do about it?”
I was feeling my way, slowly, in uncharted territory. “Mom, would you think I was weird if I …kind of explored being more Larissa? I fell in love with sleeping in a nightie, but maybe it’s more than that. Maybe, try …I don’t know …after school some time …” I choked.
“Would you like to dress like Larissa would dress, but not just at bedtime?” she said gently.
“Yes, Mother,” I said softly. I could feel and hear my heart beating.
*
The last week in January, I told Celia about Larissa. It was kind of funny; I planned it and almost rehearsed what I was going to say, how I’d counter her arguments, all of that. We’d be at her house and I’d sit her down and tell her. And of course, I chickened out. It was just another night where we watched a DVD with her folks.
The next day we were at the mall, just cruising like we always did, with smoothies, and she saw a really pretty dress, strapless, in teal and I told her it would look killer on her. She looked at me and raised an eyebrow. And I somehow knew, instantly, that her raised eyebrow meant, ‘And what about you, Larry?’ and I sipped my smoothie and just said, “Did you know that Mom calls me Larissa?”
Celia tilted her head but said nothing, so I went on, telling her about Mackie and Steve–and she certainly knew what kind of guys they were–and Mom saying we could defuse the hurt by getting used to it. But now it was almost a badge of honor, and I told her about Gram, but not about the nightgowns. I was getting nervous because she hadn’t said anything, and I wound down with, “I guess …in a way I’m kind of more girl than boy.” And gulped.
To my complete amazement, she not only accepted it; she thought it was already a done deal. “Why should I be surprised?” she said with a shrug. “I relate to you as a girl, and I mean this in the nicest way possible–you’re more girl than boy. So, do you wear dresses at home or something?”
I had to admit that no, I didn’t, but Mom and I had sort of discussed it. But so far …no. I relented and told her about having to wear a nightgown at Thanksgiving, and kind of liking it, and that Mom had gotten me some for Christmas. She nodded and said she loved nighties in winter, but slept in shorts and a tee for summer.
So we walked some more and nothing was said about it. I realized I’d left something out, so when it seemed the right time, I said quietly, “When we’re alone, you can call me Larissa, if you want. I’d like that.”
Celia smiled and said, “Thanks, and I know how much it means to you so I’m honored. But …”
“But?” I worried.
“But I can’t wait until I can call you Larissa all the time!”
*
Of course, after that day at the mall when I told Celia about Larissa, Mom and I had a long talk. We even scheduled it, and after dinner I cleared the table and was going to go to the couch like we usually did but Mom called me back to the table, which is where we always conducted business like school documents and stuff. She had placed a stack of things next to her place, and I was unaware of what was going on.
Mom sat with her hands folded. “I know we’ve always discussed things comfortably on the couch, but since we’re going to be talking about something that will affect both our lives …and finances …I thought we’d be better off being serious here at the table.”
I was a little freaked and told her but she reassured me so I sat there wondering what was coming next.
Mom sifted through the papers and pulled one out and checked it, then placed it in front of her. “I’ve been doing some research, both popular media and medical journals, so I’ve got a procedure I’m supposed to follow …more or less. A protocol. Some of the questions we both know the answer to, I think, but bear with me and answer everything like we haven’t talked before, okay? Oh …do you want me to call you Larry or Larissa?”
“Maybe …when we talk about then we say Larry and when we talk about now we say Larissa?”
Mom smiled, nodded, said she agreed and started by asking did I feel like I was a boy or a girl. I said I used to feel like an inadequate boy and overcompensated, but never really felt like I was a boy. It wasn’t that I preferred pink and kittens, I just hadn’t thought about it because I was struggling so hard to be ‘boyish’. But lately, however it happened, I’d realized that, in truth, my thoughts and feelings were girlish. Because, I said, nobody ever really knows what it’s like to be another person. But I’d have to say that I was feeling more and more like a girl every day.
Mom made notes while she nodded at my response and asked the Big One. Did I want to live as a boy or live as a girl? In other words, if I could be ‘cured’ one way or another, if I could take a single pill to change forever, or wave a magic wand …did I want the rest of my life to be male or female?
That rocked me because I hadn’t really thought about the rest of my life, since every day was kind of a new adventure. I told her that, and in saying it out loud, it became clearer to me. “I haven’t thought about, you know, the future like specifically where I would be five years, ten years, twenty years down the line …but only …like getting through day-to-day, you know? But even day-to-day …I want to be a girl. I know that I want to be a girl. I want to live as a girl, go to school as a girl. And I think …no, Mom, I know: I want to grow up to be a woman. I want to live every day of my life as a girl and woman and I hope I can be as great a woman as my mother is.”
She corrected my grammar to hide her pride. I could see the tears in her eyes as she made notes. She pursed her lips and muttered, “No buttering up the interviewer,” and we both chuckled. Then she asked if I was prepared for insults, humiliation, embarrassment, and even possible danger to achieve my goal. I said I was. She looked me in the eyes and said, “And what about your penis?”
Another rocked moment, because I hadn’t thought about that, either, until this moment. So I told her I was more or less thinking out loud and said that I’d never thought of it as anything other than to pee through. I knew how boys talked about their penises–God knows Mackie and Steve were always bragging about how big they were or how hard they got–and I hadn’t really experienced the hardness they always talked about so I really didn’t know–
Mom stopped me. “Wait, wait–Are you telling me you haven’t experienced erections? None? What about in the morning?”
I admitted that sometimes it felt kind of ‘stuffy’, but wasn’t hard; I just had to pee and then the stuffiness went away. She looked at me for a moment. Made a note, looked at me and frowned, and then told me that she wished she’d known this before, both as a mother and a nurse, so I could have been checked by doctors.
I pointed out that maybe it wouldn’t have mattered because my mind hadn’t caught up enough; I admitted that I’d been pretty immature until recently. Mom smiled and patted my hand and told me how proud she was of me.
Mom then showed me printout from medical sites and we discussed surgery to remove my penis. I asked if she thought it was a little too soon to discuss but she said that maybe we shouldn’t start down a road if we didn’t like where the road might lead–where it might end. I thought about it and she was right, and I thought about being a girl like Celia, going to school and shopping and wearing dresses to Winter Ball and that was fun and a lot of giggles, but that was external, in a way. And I knew that being a girl wasn’t all fun mall trips, and there were some very rough things about being a girl, but there were rough things about being a boy, too.
The main thing wasn’t getting to wear a dress, it was about how I felt inside, how I felt about myself and others, and how I related to the world. And I already knew that I related like my girlfriends did; I related as a girl. And there wasn’t any comparison about how I’d felt as a boy, and how I felt being with my girlfriends and the joy of being myself and …and I told Mom that removing the penis was not the end of my road; it was the end of my detour–
As soon as the words came out, two things happened to me at once. First, I was shocked that I’d said it, and second, I was shocked that it was true. It was absolutely the way I felt. And my fuzzy, un-thought-of future suddenly started coming into focus.
She stared at me for a moment while I felt a thrill go through me. Was I really thinking about ‘chopping it off’? Yes, I realized with a start and a curious feeling of a decision made–or had already been made but I’d just realized it.
I told Mom, “It’s like climbing up a hill and you don’t know what’s up top until you get there and stand up and look out over the valley. At first all you know, all you can see, is the climb, the rocks and trees and dirt around you. Your feet plodding in front of you. And you don’t really know exactly where the trail is leading you …and then suddenly you know because you’re made it and the view is incredible and you’re there and …” I was out of breath.
Mom continued staring, then frowned and asked, “Are you sure this isn’t a reaction to something? Like, falling out with your friends?”
I assured her that it wasn’t a falling out, they weren’t friends, and I was better off. Not only was I growing up, I was growing in a different direction. “And, Mom, I think they’re linked. I think I’m doing better in school, having friends, and closer to you, and just all-around happier because of that direction. It’s the road you talked about, to girlhood. I mean, a real girlhood. My girlhood.”
*
Well, it was certainly a weird turn of events. A few months ago I was on my way to becoming a juvenile delinquent–heck, I already was a delinquent. I was a lousy student and not a very good son …or a human being. Now I felt good about myself, and I was a caring, happy, productive person. People liked me and I felt like there was a future for me. I didn’t know what, exactly, but it still felt like a fresh morning, kind of. I was a very good student, and getting better; I was very close to my mother and grandmother–really my only family now–and there was only this teeny, tiny detail between my legs …I didn’t feel like a boy and wanted to be a girl.
Because now I knew why Mom did our talk at the table; it was serious stuff and I considered everything more carefully than I would have from the comfort of the couch. And I’d thought about things I’d never thought about before, and came to decisions that had to be made and that I felt good about.
And where to go from here?
*
In the pile of materials, Mom had several screen dumps from teen girls’ clothing sites. We flipped through them, eliminating Goth and punk and retro and basically settled that I’d be like my girlfriends, a Hollister/American Eagle/Abercrombie type of girl. I kind of knew that already, but it settled Mom’s mind and she approved.
Next we talked about medical testing and I said yes and she had connections at her hospital, of course, and would ‘start the ball rolling’ the next day.
Finally we talked about school, and we both agreed that the best course would be to finish out the school year as Larry–although it might get harder for me–and with the doctors’ approval, try full-time living as Larissa once school let out. In the meantime, she said she expected her daughter to be present after school, all weekends and holidays, and if it looked like Larry was making a reappearance–except at school, of course–she’d ‘put the brakes on’ the whole thing. She said her research had said it was vital that I commit to being a girl, to being Larissa; half-and-half wouldn’t prove anything or help me. It was a major decision, but I agreed and felt another weight lifting from me.
She said she’d trust my instincts about who to tell; Celia and Molly, of course, I thought, and began running a list of my friends’ names–we both laughed again that they were all girls–and then Mom asked me what I’d do when Mackie found out. I said I hoped I’d be as strong as Celia had been when she faced him down, and Mom nodded, smiling, but said to watch out for him because he was mean. I knew that would be something I’d have to deal with later.
*
The school’s championship basketball game was a huge event for the community, and everybody was there cheering the team on. I sat with Celia and Heather and Monica and even dragged Molly Chen along with me, sitting on the other side of me because she didn’t feel a part of the others. I did a dirty trick that I hoped would pay off. When I left to go to the boys’ rest room–something I disliked in part because it was already feeling alien to me and kind of distasteful–I waited and watched the stands from a distance and sure enough, Celia had roped Molly into their conversation and when I saw Molly laugh I knew everything was cool. When I came back, I made a point of sitting next to Mon and asked her how things were with her and Rick. I already knew they were doing great as a couple–and Rick scored a basket just then so we all whooped–and I winked at Molly and she gave me a little smile because she knew what I’d done, and mouthed ‘thank you’ and I smiled back. It was a great night, and not just because we won the state championship!
End of Part 2
Bad enough I have to write a diary for school. So why did I write another one? To tell the truth …
I missed a couple of days of school over the month because of doctors’ visits that couldn’t be rescheduled, but I was ahead of my work and kept my grades up. Sorry about not being around, Mrs. McKenzie!
*
It was sad about the train crash that happened; it was like something out of a movie. Everybody knows about it so I don’t need to go into it, but I had some inside news that they didn’t say in the news reports. They were going on about the driver of the car the train hit being drunk or something. My mother was in one of the emergency crews on the crash site and the information from the hospital was that the driver had suffered a heart attack and was probably dead before the train hit his car. That’s a relief, in a way, for his family, but at least nobody else died. And Mom was on the news!
*
After that, all the kids at school were buzzing about the Saint Valentine’s Day Dance that they renamed the Sweetheart Ball because some religious kids and their families got upset about the ‘Saint’ part, and then about Valentine himself, and so the school just threw up its hands and renamed it. All of my friends were excited and had a great time at the Ball. I didn’t go, but they filled me in so at least I knew what happened.
*
I have to confess that I knew some of the guys involved in the mess. It’s kind of funny in a way; they probably made jokes about staging a St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and then the school renamed the dance, so I wondered how they said things like ‘Let’s mess up the Sweethearts!’ Anyway, I’m glad that nobody was really hurt but I’m sad that it happened. Some people just can’t allow others to have a good time. I guess some people feel so bad about themselves that they don’t want other people to feel good about themselves, so they try to drag them down to their level.
But none of my friends were hurt and their night went on, with a bigger story to tell than who kissed who or who broke up with who. I feel funny saying I’m glad I was at home that night, because it almost sounds cowardly somehow, but I was home with my mother, who’s been sick. It sounds like a lame excuse but it’s the truth. My mother is the most important person to me and she’s better now but was really ill in the middle of the month.
*
We found out that Mom was sick from the fumes from something on the train; six of her nursing crew got sick, too. Mom was one of the very first responders to the accident and got sick first so at first we thought it was an incredibly bad flu or food poisoning but when the others came down with the same symptoms a day or two later, it helped everybody figure out what it was. Some gas was released that shouldn’t have been carried on a train with passengers. But Mom and everybody is a lot better but she was mad she had to miss two weeks of work–out of twenty years!
*
Everything resumed after the Sweetheart Ball, with school, hanging with friends, and except for my mom getting better–yay!–there’s really nothing else to report. We’re in the long haul until Spring Break, and I have no idea what’s going to happen. In the past, Mom and I have traveled; we don’t go to touristy places like Disneyland. Last year we didn’t go anywhere for some reason, but before that we went to Death Valley, Springfield, Illinois for the Lincoln museum, and the NASA place in Huntsville, Alabama. Just fun places that weren’t filled with drunk college students.
Doctors, doctors, doctors …first for me, then for Mom. It was weird. We’ve been so healthy all along. After the Big Discussion (‘The Big D’, Mom and I called it, giggling), she had news for me and the first week of the month I met with three doctors and started going through the mill. They took blood, urine, swabs from my cheeks almost every time we met. And test after test, from those inkblots to describing what was going on in photos to ‘what if this happened or that happened’ kind of things. We met every week, and it kind of helped the ‘weaning’ that Ms. Belasco had mentioned and although they reviewed her notes, everybody agreed that for a time I should be meeting with another therapist at the hospital. The last time I saw Ms. Belasco, I hugged her and kissed her cheek and I was crying. I think she was, too.
*
My mother has been a nurse all of her life, and worked at that hospital since before I was born and I don’t think she ever got sick. Not once. And when it was really important, like when they had flu epidemics, she was always there. But there was nothing to prepare us for how sick she got so fast, and it was only when some of her other nurses got sick, too, that the hospital–let’s see if I can spell this!–epidemiologists realized it was something from the train crash they’d helped out on. Then they could treat everybody and everybody got better, but Mom took the longest to get well because she was at the crash site the longest and worked the longest before someone could replace her. Because of the prolonged exposure she was the first to exhibit symptoms and was sick the longest and the worst of the nurses. So I guess it makes sense that it took longer for her to get well. I thought that her getting sick wasn’t worth the hero’s treatment she’d gotten on the TV news. She’d yelled at the camera and bubble-headed reporter to get out of her way and let her treat the injured! So she was famous …and got paid for it by being sick.
*
I stayed with her every single moment I could. I would have missed school to do it but she wanted me to go and said I’d be grounded if I didn’t go to school, which only made me love her more. But because I didn’t have her to drive me, we had to rearrange some of my doctor’s visits, so I missed some classes. It was worth it, I think, because we were making real progress. Well, that’s the word they used, but I asked what ‘progress’ meant, and they meant progress to fully accepting me as a ‘gender dysphoric’ person. If nothing else, I’m getting good at medical spellings! Anyway, it all meant that things like getting paperwork changed would be easier.
Imagine, paperwork that made Lawrence disappear and Larissa become a real person!
*
Larissa was becoming more real, anyway. This started out as a big month for exploring girlhood–and wanting to explore more and more! I’ll tell events and bypass the time when Mom was sick, because I already covered that. During that time I was either at school or the hospital, so I had to spend much more time as Larry, and I hated it. Absolutely hated it. I told that to the therapist and she agreed with me that however unfortunate Mom’s sickness was, it taught me a lesson that might have been missed. That is, to be Larry, to wear Larry’s clothes, is like an act, and I think about ‘him’ as a third person. It’s like a masquerade, a costume I put on. Actually, that makes it easier to ‘impersonate’ Larry. But by the time I got home every night that she was in the hospital–the hospital paid for cab fare–all Larissa could do was get ready for bed in her nightie. When we’d cleared out some storage, Mom had found an old stuffed bear that I’d loved when I was three, and I had the bear on my bed and would hug it and cry. This was before we knew what caused Mom’s illness, and before she got better, of course.
*
The day after The Big D, I came home from school and Mom said we were going to make a mall run as soon as I finished my homework. I was lucky enough to have very little that day so off we went, but to a mall across town. Mom said that way ‘we wouldn’t be bothered’ but I knew she meant I wouldn’t be looking over my shoulder for classmates every ten seconds! Oh, and before we left she took a cloth measuring tape and measured me wearing just my boxers and then converted my measurements; I learned that girls’ sizes are different than boys’ sizes.
There was this …odd moment when I presented myself to Mom. She looked at me with a little frown–I mean, she really looked at me–and asked ‘how long I’d looked like that’. I guess she meant the kind of soft and doughy way I felt, because she was interested in my hips and my waist and–well, pretty much all of me. I was the same height I’d thought I was–she checked that, too–but everything else was kind of …like my body was shifting, a little bit. I learned a new phrase, ‘adipose tissue’ which is a fancy way of saying ‘body fat’. I thought it was silly to replace three syllables with five, but Mom said that in the world of medicine, it’s important to be precise in naming things. But yes, she grinned, there were a lot of syllables in medicine!
We chuckled at that while she went back to measuring me. This was all before I started with the doctors, and then I sure got used to multi-syllable words! But that day, Mom measured, converted, I dressed and we left.
On the way to the mall we’d talked about what to get and how to do it. In the stores, I kind of followed Mom like the bored but dutiful son for the first part but was getting so excited as she got things. I was surprised when she stopped at the big bookstore but she bought the latest of each of the teen girl magazines like Seventeen. The last stop was Target; she said she was going to pick up ‘some toiletries and sundries’ and I could stay in the car and read my magazines. That sounded better than what I thought she meant, getting things like toilet paper, which would be boring but I’d still be glad to help her. I don’t know how long she took but she had a cart with several bags, but I figured things were on sale.
Well, she’d bought a lot on sale but also way more than I expected the first day! On the way home she told me about the upcoming meeting with doctors and so I almost had more excitement than I could handle!
*
At home we set everything on things in my room–bed, chair, desk–and Mom took stock and said that in time we’d work on making it Larissa’s room. She looked at me closely to see how I’d take that, and I guess I passed the test because I thought that would be wonderful–making the room match my pretty nightgowns! She said don’t remove tags from anything but it was Fashion Show time. Or Fashion Showtime!
Mom suggested I do this ‘from the skin out’. I knew that every step of the way she was observing me and my reactions and I think I passed all the tests so I don’t have to say any more about that. She handed me a three-pack of panties and another of bras, all in pastels, and a lump formed in my throat. This was it …wearing panties and a bra was way more of a leap than wearing a nightie. And I wanted to wear them! So I opened the packages and pulled out yellow and stripped down–Mom was puttering with her back to me on purpose–and I pulled the panties up. I’d worn boxers lately because it was more macho, but always liked the tight closeness of tightie-whities and now, my very first panties.
Only …there was that lump visible. Small but still, it was there. I turned my back to Mom and tucked my little boy bits back between my legs and pulled the panties up smoothly and snugly and at that moment promised myself to keep the bits tucked away.
Then I pulled on the bra, and from somewhere I’d learned about putting it behind me, clasping in front and spinning it around. Once I’d gotten it into place I was surprised how much me there was in the cups. I’d been soft, like I mentioned in other entries, and now it kind of worked to my advantage. Mom turned around and gasped and I took that for a good sign–and especially the hug I got afterward! I told her I’d like some tightie-whities, or better yet, boys’ bikini briefs for Larry at school. They’d help keep everything tucked, and I told her I’d already decided I wanted to stay that way. Mom frowned a little but nodded, so tucked it is.
Then I tried on the skirt, a denim mini that was my very first ever and it was sort of no different from my nighties but way different, too. And Mom was great on the size; it fit perfectly. I kept it on as we went through the few tops she’d gotten, and finally chose what she’d called a camisole, or cami, in what I thought was turquoise but Mom said was really teal–I really have to learn the proper names for colors. It was very odd pulling it over the small mounds of my bra, and I thought that maybe more than my mind had been changing …
She’d gotten some flip-flops in pink, and black flats and the flats fit so I wore those. Mom came up and brushed out my hair and spun me to the mirror.
“Look, Larissa, no makeup or anything, but just dressed for school or a day at the mall–a perfectly normal, pretty girl!”
It was my turn to gasp. She was right.
*
Needless to say, nothing was taken back to the store. Everything fit and I wanted everything and more. What I hadn’t expected were the lessons I now got. Since every girl grows up learning about walking and sitting and moving in skirts and dresses–but over years–Mom now gave me a crash course. I also hadn’t expected the things she’d gotten at Target. Well, I did think about things like more cleansers and moisturizers and shampoo and stuff, but she’d gotten headbands and scrunchies and clips and brushes and …two things like fishing-tackle boxes that she said was a ‘two-fer’ special. One was a complete makeup kit, with brushes and everything, and the other was a nail kit with polish and manicure stuff. Impulsively I hugged her and she smiled and told me to ‘be careful’ and handed me some nail polish remover. She meant to be careful not to have any traces of Larissa’s makeup or polish on Larry at school. I resolved that as much as I wanted to try using nail polish, I’d only wear it on weekends.
*
But the makeup …that was exciting! Mom had picked up a large soft-cover book at Target that was like ‘The Teen’s Guide to Makeup’, and was full of ‘how-to’ suggestions, and combined with the pictures of the girls in the magazines, I started experimenting that night. But first I made Mom swear that she wouldn’t laugh at anything I did but that I would expect and accept all criticism. Deal, she said, so I sat down, opened my makeup box and proceeded to put way too much on, like all girls do, then removed it (makeup remover also came from Target ‘sundries’) and reapplied.
When I went out to the couch for our nightly sit-together, she nodded, smiled, hugged me, kissed the top of my head, and I nestled in, enjoying the sight of my legs sticking out from the hem of my skirt.
But that night I also thought about my legs in another way, and sure enough Mom had ‘sundries’ for that, too. I discussed it with her, but since I didn’t have Boys’ PE any more–a study hall instead, for the rest of the school year–there was no reason not to shave my legs. I’d done that remover thing once before, but to actually shave?
It was very strange; I was wearing a bra and panties and skirt and I was freaking out about shaving my legs? But somehow it seemed like an even more formal declaration. I think it came down to the fact that the clothes could come off. Makeup could come off. But once I shaved my legs and underarms–and maybe, in the future, plucked my eyebrows?–then I’d really crossed a line. And I wanted to cross that line–I really wanted it!
I took a bath that night and Mom said to let her prepare it. She’d put wonderful stuff in the water, and scented candles, and I got tears in my eyes at her thoughtfulness and it just made the candles sparkle prettier! Mom said that baths were special times for girls to relax and get in touch with their bodies and their inner selves, and I resolved to make this kind of bath a regular thing for me.
Of course I nicked once under my knee, but other than that, no cuts, and even did under my arms with no problem. I didn’t really have any hair anywhere, but I also decided, laying there in the relaxing tub, to get wild and crazy. I had just a little downy wisp of hair at my crotch, but I shaved slightly to make a nice little triangle. I emptied the tub and got scissors from the medicine cabinet and trimmed ‘my bush’ down a little, then showered to rinse everything from me and the tub. Mom had baby oil to put on, and powder, and that night I slept in my nightie, smooth and sleek and feeling deliciously feminine.
It made it all the harder to get up in the morning and dress as Larry.
*
The shopping frenzy for the Sweetheart Ball was incredible; I think it excited everybody to be able to wear so many pinks and reds. Celia and I went shopping with her mom again, and it was very relaxed and fun. I got to help carry everything into Celia’s room, despite the ‘no boys’ rule; her mom looked at me and was obviously torn and I excused myself and went back downstairs.
She came back down and said, “Larry, it’s not that I don’t trust you …”
I smiled and told her it was okay, really, and that I understood. I felt safe in knowing that hopefully she’d see me as her daughter’s girlfriend someday.
And Celia called me after she got home from the Ball; she’d had a sort-of fight with Stan the Man but not because of her being hurt–just the opposite. She’d pretty much realized even before the dance that he wasn’t the right guy for her–we’d been talking about it–and when she told Stan that she didn’t think they were right together, he took it kind of hard. She felt crummy but I pointed out how much worse she’d feel, in the long run, if she’d faked it and stayed with him? Fortunately, he hadn’t had to pay anything for the Sweetheart Ball for her, and she’d broken the news to him on the ride home. It had taken an hour to talk him out of talking her into it, so to speak.
In the meantime, I’d gotten a call from a thrilled Molly Chen who apologized for calling so late but just had a fantastic time! Monica had kind of nudged Molly and a guy named Derek together and they sort of clicked and it was her first dance ever and she owed it all to me!
“What?” I asked.
“Come on, Larry; if you hadn’t dragged me to the basketball game, and then just happened to slip away and then sit with Monica, well …I’d still be sitting at home wondering why nobody liked me.”
It felt great to help her; I just felt as great as I could without having been there.
*
And it was a good thing I wasn’t there because there’d been an ugly scene. It was kind of like the original movie of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where the prom is crashed by vampires. Only in this movie, it was Mackie and his new buddies. They demanded to be let in, pretended to be all kissy-face, screaming that they were ‘sweethearts’. The scary thing was that Celia and Molly both told me Mackie now had eight or nine new followers, not even kids from our school …and who knew if there were more that weren’t there?
Nobody knew who’d called 911, but it was a good thing because the chaperones wouldn’t have been able to handle it and might have gotten hurt. Mackie’s gang had somebody that was already in the room open the double doors at the back and they flooded in. The chaperones tried to get them back out that door and there were a lot of yelling and extended arms on both sides, but then the cops arrived and with the open doors flooded with red and blue flashers, Mackie’s bunch ran through the room, smashing decorations as they went, knocking over a punch bowl and scooping food as they went. They turned and threw the food back into the room as they ran through the school’s halls, finally blasting out the far end …and right into three cop cars led by a police sergeant who graduated from the school long ago and knew the school’s layout!
So Mackie got expelled and sent to Juvie, and nobody knew how long and how angry he’d be when he got out.
I couldn’t help wonder if I would have been one of his rampaging gang if things hadn’t …gone a different direction?
*
All of which made it harder to be Larry at school. Every day it took more effort to ‘be a guy’ and not giggle or give myself away somehow. Walking more or less like a boy was hard. And talking? It was all I could do to not talk like I did at home or with Celia; I talked like a boy–if at all–only six hours each of five days. And not even a full six hours; only when I was called on in class. All the rest of the time I relaxed and was myself, and the way I spoke was girlish. Not girly, not like some of the gay boys with lisping and all; I just sounded like another girl. It just came to me; as I got happier, I talked more, and I talked with my girlfriends. While we never got into ‘omigod!’ Valley Girl-speak, I guess I’d just picked up the melody and word choice and it was natural to me. And harder to be Larry without drawing attention to how hard it was to be Larry.
I needed allies, friends who would know about me and be able to police me better than I could myself, but limited myself to considering only Celia and Molly until the end of school. So …how to reveal myself? I knew there was no problem with Celia but Molly was an unknown factor.
Molly and I were working on a project in English; we’d worked well in Science so this was easy for us. Our teacher was a big Lord of the Rings fan, and told us how Tolkein was fascinated with language. So, like a class of mini-Tolkeins, we were trying to construct a usable grammar in a non-existent language. It made our brains hurt, which was part of the fun. She’d come over to my house on a Sunday afternoon when Mom was home and we’d sat at the kitchen table working and actually came up with something. Mom had ice cream for us afterward and we got along great.
So at school I’d be chatting with Molly and kind of try to sound her out about gays, boys and girls, and her feelings. And wonder of wonders, she had a gay older brother–much older–who was an emergency medical technician, but was very flamboyant and very effeminate. She giggled and said at least her clothes were safe from him because she was much smaller than him. But she and her parents had actually marched with him in a Gay Pride parade!
Taking another leap of faith, I invited her to my house ‘for more ice cream’ on Sunday, and she said ‘what for’ and all I said was ‘pride’. She gave me a look after a pause, a small smile, and agreed.
But I wanted Celia to fully know first; she’s my closest friend and has just been wonderful. It was funny; when I first went to her house, her mother said I couldn’t go into Celia’s room because boys weren’t allowed. We hadn’t pushed it, even when it was obvious that I wasn’t boyfriend material, and even after shopping for Winter Ball gowns.
Mom and I discussed it, and we decided to grab the bull by the horns. I was going to be Larissa, and if her mother freaked out now or later it would be the same. We could only hope for as closest to zero freak-out as we could get. Mom and I set it up for the last week in February, when she was strong and healthy again. We decided to make it a celebration of Mom back in the world, so to speak, and although Celia’s mom wasn’t a close friend of my mother’s, she knew that her daughter and I were close so she came along.
We had a lovely catered affair, so to speak. We decorated a little bit and this company delivered things in covered dishes and we just set it up. The next day we returned the dishes. So it was very nice and I would have loved to be dressed up as mother and daughter but I had to be Larry at the start.
They arrived and we had a little sparkling cider before, making small talk, and then the meal. After, when the ladies had coffee and we had Cokes sitting in our living room, we began talking about …well, me. I started it by saying that I fully understood Celia’s parents not wanting boys in her room. But I hoped it would change where I was concerned because–
And Celia interrupted me. “Do you really want to do this? You don’t have to, you know.”
God, I love that girl, for being so kind and compassionate! I said yes, I did, and looked back at her mother, who was looking back and forth between Celia and I. I looked at Mom, who smiled and nodded.
“Mrs. Duran,” I began, “I’m not like …any boy you know.” I swallowed. “That’s because I’m not really a boy.”
“I asked awhile ago if you were gay,” she said gently, “and you never really answered me.”
“That’s because it’s not a simple answer, and that wasn’t the time or place. Tonight, it is. The usual things about gay don’t apply. Because in my heart of hearts, I’m a girl.” I went on in a rush, my voice shaking. “In my heart, in my soul, in my thoughts and dreams and in every way but one, I’m a girl.”
Silence.
Mom leaned forward and was about to say something, but Celia’s mom said, “You’re transgendered.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, not trusting my voice to say more.
More silence. Mom raised an eyebrow at me and back to the woman.
Celia’s mom turned to her daughter. “Did you know about this?”
“Not really. Sort of. I mean,” Celia floundered, hating to be put on the spot. “I just got this feeling that Larry wasn’t like other guys. I mean, really not like other guys. And that was pretty hard to see at first, because he’d been such a jerk.” She turned to me. “Sorry, but you were.”
“You’re only saying jerk because your mom’s here,” I smiled with shame. “You probably had a stronger word for the …jerk that I was.”
“Overcompensating?” her mother asked, startling us.
“Yes,” I admitted. “Big time.”
Celia’s mother nodded and then said to her daughter, “And?”
Celia said, “I could never be friends with somebody like he was. But last fall he changed. I mean, in every way. His grades got better, he was nicer to everybody, he wasn’t dirty–you were, you know,” she said to me again and I blushed again. “But I got this feeling it was …that there was someone else inside him, you know? Wanting to come out? I never put it into words before.”
“You responded to him as a girl? I mean, as another girl?”
Celia nodded. “And it was just so natural. I mean, come on, Mom; you’ve spent lots of time with Larry. Does he feel like a boy? I mean, close your eyes and think. Like a vibe, or something. Anyway, after the holidays, at the end of January, he told me about sleeping in nightgowns and being named …”
She looked from Mom to me, as if asking if it was okay. We both nodded, since for some reason her mother wanted to hear the story from her.
Celia shrugged. “He told me his mother called him Larissa. His old, bad friends mocked him with that name when he split from them, and his mom said that it would take the power to hurt away from the word.”
Celia’s mom nodded. “It works; it can be a very powerful antidote. But you knew he slept in nightgowns?”
I said, “Yes, starting at my grandmother’s over Thanksgiving. And ever since. And I told Celia.” I got another nod.
There was a pause, and then Celia’s mother asked her, “And are you convinced that Larry is transgendered, and is Larissa?”
Celia looked at me and then back to her mom. “Yes, Mom, absolutely. I never even thought about that word until tonight, but, yes.”
Her mother nodded and turned to my mother. “And what are your feelings?”
Mom said, “I am also absolutely convinced that my child is transgendered. That I never really had a son, but a daughter that was in embryo, sort of …like a chrysalis. And what’s more, the doctors at the University Medical Center agree. Larissa has been diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria–the medical term for transgendered–and is under their care and treatment. It’s been only a short time, but they are definite in their assessment.”
The woman nodded again, still not displaying any emotion one way or another. “And clothing?”
Mom nodded. “We’re slowly building up her wardrobe. She comes home from school …or I should say, the Larry mask comes home from school, removes the mask and the boy clothes, and reveals Larissa, my daughter. We find it easier to think of it as a boy costume rather than switching from boy to girl.”
“Well, you never really got the boy part right, ever,” Celia teased me.
Silence.
Celia and I exchanged looks with Mom, then all three of us looked at the woman who sat in thought. I don’t think any of us expected the next thing she said.
“I think I would like to meet Larissa.” She looked at me, at Mom, and back to me.
Mom smiled and nodded. “I’ve got some cake and we can refresh the coffee or switch to tea while she gets out of her boy costume.”
I was slow on the uptake; Celia reached over and swatted me. “Hel-lo?” I looked dumbly at her and she said, “I told you I wanted to be able to call you Larissa all the time!”
Ah!
*
I truly hadn’t thought of what to wear. Mom and I never got that far; we were so busy trying to figure ways to break it to Celia’s mom that we never got as far as Larissa actually making an appearance. I figured that would be later, with Celia and me alone, but this made more sense.
It was best, I thought, to go with the same kind of clothes that Celia was wearing, a simple skirt and top. We’d told them that tonight wasn’t a dress-up affair, thank goodness, because I didn’t have dressy clothes, anyway–yet! So I stripped quickly and put on a burgundy bra and panty set and the teal cami that I liked so much and a black denim skirt Mom had brought home on the day she fell ill. I brushed out my hair quickly into a style we both liked, with a barrette, and did a quick makeup application, not too much of anything. I slipped on some black skimmers that needed breaking in and my jewelry, including the magnetic earrings that Mom had found on the internet. We’d agreed that I’d wait until school was out to pierce my ears.
So …time to go in and face the music. As I’d been dressing I’d become more and more myself, my real self, and was actually kind of oddly relaxed when I walked into the kitchen and asked Mom if there was anything I could do to help? She smiled at me and nodded her approval, and handed me the teapot to bring in.
I walked in and I swear I stopped ‘em cold! Celia gasped, ‘Omigod!’ and her mother gasped and stared as I asked if she’d like more tea? And on her nod, I poured and set it down and then sat in the chair I’d been in. Of course, I smoothed my skirt under me the way I always did, knees together and my hands folded in my lap.
Celia looked at her mother, who nodded, took a deep sigh, and then smiled hugely and said, “Now that makes more sense! I’m very pleased to meet you at last, Larissa. You’re a very pretty young lady.”
“Very pretty young lady?” Celia asked, shocked. “Mom, she’s a babe!”
So it went pretty well, I guess!
*
Saturday was truly, truly weird. I wore a skirt and top and makeup and went to Celia’s and up to her room like any of her girlfriends, and her mom took us to the mall! It was weird and wonderful and I think the strangest thing was that it was so normal! Her mother accepted me without problem, and since I’d never met Celia’s dad, I would be introduced as Larissa and so he’d never know of any weirdness.
It was a distant mall, but they said they liked to explore other malls for the unique shops, but actually I think her mom wanted to return something to the big department store that she’d bought at our local mall, and didn’t want to face that local mall’s staff!
Afterwards, we had smoothies and sat in the food court and her mom said the ultimate compliment–she said that already, she couldn’t remember Larry. I hugged her for that and all in all it was a great day, but they both knew I’d have to be Larry at school and now I had some sympathy.
*
Which left Sunday and Molly. I was so worried that after the acceptance by Celia’s mother–not to mention Celia, who I truly knew was my best friend–I just thought it was tempting fate for lightning to strike twice.
And at first it was awkward, way more than I thought it would be or should be. I think it was because there was no obvious reason why I’d invited her over. We’d finished the project, and ice cream alone wasn’t much of an inducement–even if it was Baskin-Robbins Gold Medal Ribbon!
So Molly was kind of …odd, stand-offish. I tried to get her to open up a little but only succeeded in making her suspicious. Suddenly, a light bulb went on in my head.
“Oh!” I said, stunned. “Molly …do you think I’m trying to …I don’t know …ask you to be my girlfriend or something?”
“Well,” she said, her head down, “it does kind of seem like it, and I really like you, Larry, but as a friend, and …”
All of my carefully-planned speeches went out the window.
I stared. “Molly, I could never be your boyfriend!”
“What?” She looked up, the start of hurt feelings on her face.
“No! I could never be your boyfriend because I’m not a boy!” I almost laughed. “Molly, I asked you here today because you’re a special friend and I wanted you to know that I’m a girl! Boyfriend? As if!”
“What?” she said again, then the light dawned. “You mean that you’re …omigod, Larry, are you TG?”
I’d learned enough to know what she meant. “Yes. My name is Larissa.”
“Geez, Larissa …couldn’t you pick something a little less …obvious?” she giggled.
I told her the Mackie story and she agreed that it made sense but that I should have picked Julia or Rebecca or something like that. “I mean, my brother Tommy doesn’t become Tammy, or Thomasina, for God’s sake.”
“Your brother …” I wasn’t sure.
“I told you he’s gay. He does drag at Halloween and a couple times a year but he’s not really a queen. But he’s Jessica.” She grinned. “A short, Asian Jessica!” and she giggled.
I sighed with relief. She wanted to know how long I’d been like this and I told her everything and she said she would have liked to be the first to know, but she understood. “I mean, Celia’s your BFF and that’s what matters. But I think it’s really cool that I’m your number two.”
So I knew it was time for Larry to disappear; Mom stepped in to answer any of Molly’s questions while I became Larissa and I was so glad not to have to waste any more precious weekend time as Larry! And it was a couple of girlfriends that tucked into the ice cream, giggling away, and we ended the night with Molly promising to help me anyway she could with my struggles to be Larry–or Larissa.
End of Part 3
Bad enough I have to write a diary for school. So why did I write another one? To tell the truth …
One of the dullest months, broken by storms and that power outage, and midterms.
*
I’m blessed to have a couple of really good friends, and other friends as well, that have helped me grow up a little. It’s something that I think too many of us take for granted, so I just wanted to say that my friends are so important to me.
*
And my mother, of course. After last month’s scare with the sickness she had from the train crash, I can’t even conceive of not having her around. After all, who else would put up with me?
*
I’m usually pretty even-tempered but maybe it was the storms this month but I’ve just been cranky. Crotchety. And my friends both called me on it and let me rage until I was back to normal. Weird; must be static in the air or other things like that.
*
I think I did pretty well on my midterms; we won’t know until the first week of April.
*
I’m being treated for a medical condition that I’m not going to write about here, but I brought it up to say that I’ve been spending a lot of the time with doctors and at the hospital, and I’m beginning to think about maybe having a medical career. I don’t see myself as a bedside doctor or brilliant surgeon, but maybe in research or psychology. It’s fascinating to think that people can cure other people’s minds, because, after all, what’s really in anybody’s mind? Who can tell?
*
For that matter, what is normal?
Oh God Oh God Oh God however did I survive this month?
*
Hormones. Oh, my God, hormones! It seems my body is a little …odd. I seem to be pretty much chemically female. Genetically male, of course, but genetics doesn’t show what’s going on in my cerebral machinery, and apparently it decided that it wasn’t enough that I be smaller than any ‘typical’ male–we don’t use the ‘normal’ word here–but my cerebral machinery also thought it would be fun to squirt female hormones through me at puberty.
I’ve mentioned how I’m soft, no matter how much exercise or diet regimens I try. Well, it’s girl softness, which is actually pretty darned fine with me! And I mentioned how odd (and wonderful) it was to put on a bra for the first time? That’s because it was an A cup and I filled it. Just me, with my fleshiness. That night I revealed myself to Celia and her mom, and later to Molly …nobody commented on my bust or lack thereof. And nobody asked if I ‘stuffed’, either. So like Goldilocks, maybe I was just right …
The doctors, of course, rolled up their sleeves and started tweaking things. My system is pretty responsive, as well, we discovered, so they could get results pretty quick and on to the next experiment.
Only …it was me they were experimenting with. Mom and I agreed to it, of course, and it had to be done, but still …it messes you up.
It sure did me.
*
I was going along, perfectly fine, enjoying life. The doctors said I might feel different things or not, but I didn’t expect to become a raging bitch. There’s no other words for it–oh, yes, there is. It’s funny; when I was trying to be a tough guy, hanging out with Mackie, we’d use the word ‘cunt’ all the time. I’ve changed so much that now that I actually want my penis removed and a vagina in its place, I can’t bring myself to say it. Even typing it just now seems rude, and if I had to, I’d say that somebody said ‘the C word’.
So I blew up at Celia for something so silly that I’m embarrassed about it …it was how plum was some nail polish. She’s strong–one of the reasons I love her–and she gave it right back to me. Her mother heard us, and even hearing her try to calm us by saying ‘girls, girls’–which I always loved to hear–didn’t work. Her mother just looked at me and said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were PMS-ing.” Celia and I looked at each other and laughed, and then I completely burst into tears. “Yep,” her mom said, chuckling. “PMS.”
It was the hormone mixture, of course.
School was harder than it had ever been, for two reasons. I was having trouble concentrating for the first time since last fall, when I improved as a student. And I was getting angry and upset and it was all I could do for Larry to not scream at somebody. I was walking down the halls out of school with Molly and I snapped at her over some little thing and she said, “Ah …I see you’re acuent today.”
I’d never heard the word; she pronounced it ‘ah-cue-ent’ and asked her what it meant. She grinned and said she’d learned it from Tommy, her gay brother, and it was a polite and discreet way to refer to somebody when they were being a (C word). Again, I laughed and then choked on tears. Molly said, “You’ve got it bad, girl. Get yourself together; kids can still see! Are they fiddling with your ‘mones?”
And she was right, of course. Molly’s always right. The doctors were fiddling–if you can call turning a happy girl into a raging she-male monster ‘fiddling’! I stormed into my next session with my exasperated and long-suffering Mom and we told them that whatever they were doing, they got their results so knock it off! They gave us these Buddha smiles and nodded, made notes, and gave me two shots and new pills. They calmed me down within a day and life went on.
*
Later I found out that they wanted to see my reaction to testosterone. Here I was, thinking they were merely adjusting the mix of my female hormones, and they rammed a bunch of boy ‘mones in me! They said that the way it upset me was just about what they thought would happen, but they had to try it anyway. It turned out a strong dose of male hormones was like poison to me! I’d passed another hurdle and thank God I hadn’t done any serious damage to my relationships. Once we knew what had happened, my girlfriends told me that now I would be more tolerant when they got weird during their periods.
*
Periods make me sad, because I’ll never be in that club, so to speak. It’s the one thing that medical science can’t do for me. Mom pointed out that young girls and older women don’t have periods and they’re not any less female, and I had to accept that. But we realized that the new hormone mix was making me ultra-feminine, with serious nesting urges. I arranged and rearranged my closet a dozen times, I baked up a storm, and it was only when Mom alerted the doctors that it might be next to impossible for the new, ultra-girly Larissa to stay undercover as Larry that they eased off on the dosage. As I mentioned, apparently I’m a medical marvel because it only takes a couple of days for my body to react. It’s partly the reason why I sort of ‘fell out of boyhood’ so fast last fall; the docs think it was when my body started really flooding the estrogen into me. And I reacted fast. Sort of like a teeter-board, one doctor said. A little too much this way, and whoops!
*
When the storms blew in, and the power blew out, Mom and I spent a lot of time with candles. It was kind of a fun thing, and I made an off-hand remark about ‘pioneer women’ and since we didn’t have TV or computers to spend time with so we had a couple nights of story-telling. Our kitchen is gas so we could cook, and make hot cocoa the real way, and we’d curl up on the couch and Mom talked.
She talked about our family, telling me my family history almost two hundred years back, with one branch Yankee sea captains and one branch truly pioneers, trekking across the west in Conestoga wagons. It humbled me as she talked. We talked mostly about the women, who lost their family names and forged new families. We talked about their life, growing their own food and preparing all day, cooking out of a wagon, or running households while their captains were at sea.
Strong, independent women, taking on burdens that would probably break a lot of men. It humbled me as she talked and I had such respect for her and all the women that preceded her that I resolved to ‘amount to something’. I was a sort of an ‘honorary’ female, something unthinkable in their time, but I wanted to contribute as much as they could. I couldn’t bear children but I could raise some, and I could do other things in the world. This all made me think more of getting into the medical field. I wanted those women to look down from decades and centuries past and say they were proud of Larissa.
*
When we talked about bearing children, Mom said it was time I started learning more physical things about females, so we had long talks about women’s bodies and emotions. I learned about menstruation and reproduction …well, we’d covered those in class, but with Mom telling me I fully grasped the significance to women’s lives. Mom told me about her own first period, the tough time she’d had as a teenager until her periods became regular, and some stories about other girls she knew. She told me about being pregnant with me, and about the birth, and breastfeeding me. I realized that if the doctors were right, I would be able to breastfeed at some point! Wow!
*
We were both aware that she’d kind of skipped over the how she got pregnant with me. That brought up three new areas to talk about. My father, men (and boys) in general, and sex. Just a few light topics by candlelight between us girls …
Mom had been telling me the genealogy of her side of the family, because she knew it. My father’s we dispensed with rather quickly, since most of it was unknown past my grandfather on my father’s side. My grandfather appeared in Los Angeles at some point with a general store. He did pretty well, had a fine time of it and then lost everything in the Stock Market Crash of 1929. He and my grandmother–a Los Angeles girl about which nothing was known about before her marriage–struggled like everyone did in the Depression, and he went to fight in World War II. My father was conceived while my grandfather was on furlough, before going back and dying in the Philippines. My father was raised by a single mother–another strong woman–and became a salesman like his father had been, only instead of having a store he traveled. He did a number of different sales jobs.
He was actually assistant manager of a Ford dealership when my mother met him. She was gorgeous–I’ve seen pictures–and he was handsome and a born salesman and she didn’t say it but I kind of got the feeling that I wasn’t planned. At least by him, anyway, for as soon as I came along there were troubles in the hasty marriage. Mom admitted that she kind of wanted to get away from my grandmother’s farm and become a nurse in The Big City and here was this dazzling soon-to-be-manager of a car dealership …and then, all too soon, it became obvious that he’d never become manager and never become much of a husband.
He was already fooling around before she found out, and I remembered yelling from that time and I think I mentioned that. And maybe because of the marriage, maybe because of me, maybe because he’d never be manager, but my father started drinking, which made everything worse. Finally, Mom said, she asked herself what was best for me–the toxic environment of two people who didn’t love each other but stayed together for society’s conventions, or a single, non-yelling, loving mother.
Easy choice!
We had no contact with him at all; she wasn’t entirely sure where he was. He paid child support–she didn’t discuss alimony–and it was an automatic bank transfer. If it stopped coming, we’d still be okay financially, but she would have the hassle of tracking him down. My strong paternal grandmother died of cancer when I was three, and I think she was a bit ashamed of her son but I was told she doted on me.
So that was my family.
*
Now, men (and boys) in general …
Mom checked that I knew The Birds & The Bees stuff correctly, and filled in some questions I’d had about, well, you could say ‘hydraulics’. I knew boys had erections–even though I’d never had one–but nobody had said anything about girls getting wet. It was like the subject of female sexuality was considered a little too personal–or too sexy?–to go into. Suddenly, the concept of rape, with an un-lubricated vagina, became much more terrible to contemplate. And back in September I’d talked about basically gang-raping Celia? I felt sick to my stomach; I was so ashamed and disgusted with who I’d been.
*
Since I’m telling the truth here, I’ve got to say that I’d never thought about sex. Oh, I talked really big around Mackie and Steve. Even that horrible thing I’d said to Celia was threatening her with something I didn’t have the ability to do and didn’t have the first idea how to do. Well, yeah, I’d seen porn–Steve’s favorite pastime–and had vague, general ideas what it was all about; but the physical sensation, what my body would do to fuck someone like I’d threatened …no clue. The doctors and the therapist think it’s because of my hormonal soup, I mean, from childhood until last year, when the soup became …more strongly female flavored, should I say?
As I slid nearer to girlhood last fall, there were the first little inklings in the back of my mind that there was something about boys and girls. Maybe it was my new girlfriends all talking about boys. Middle school and junior high are transitional periods. You get scrawny boys with Mickey Mouse voices and no pubic hair next to muscled guys that are shaving, and you get thin-as-a-twig, flat-as-a-board girls that play with Barbies next to curvy babes in makeup, fishnet stockings and leather miniskirts …and they’re all the exact same age!
So I figured some girls weren’t quite as into boys as they seemed and others were really into boys and didn’t talk about it, so I fit right in. The more I became ‘one of the girls’, the easier it was to just relax and go with the flow. Occasionally I wondered if I’d be one of those people that had zero interest in sex their whole lives, or be interested in boys, or interested in girls. Sexually interested, I mean. And the knotty question of ‘would I be gay or a lesbian’ if I like boys or girls was something I didn’t really go into with my therapist Ms. Belasco.
But it wasn’t until this month and the Hormone Madness that things tipped decisively. It wasn’t the raging part; it was afterwards, when they made me Super-Femme. Or, it might have been a combination of the two because of events that kind of bumped into each other.
*
Like the way I bumped into Mark Brashear. I was in the raging ‘mones part of the month so I kind of bulled my way down the halls. Larry always moved in a kind of stealth mode, slipping around groups and never coming into contact. Now that I look back on it, that was weird. Anyway, these two guys came around the corner and I bumped into one of them, looked up and saw it was Mark. He’s a sports star for the school; I don’t have him in any of my classes but he’s supposed to be pretty smart, too. So I kind of growled and kept walking, and not twenty feet later Molly came up to me and said, ‘be cool, girl’ in that quiet voice of hers and I settled down and didn’t think anything of it the rest of the day.
*
About a week later I was in the full throes of the super-femme hormone rush, and was folding my camisoles for the umpteenth time and the thought, ‘gee, I wonder if Mark Brashear would like me in this one or in this one?’ floated out of nowhere. I shrugged it off–I was in a kind of la-di-dah mode with that hormone mixture–and was folding and refolding my bras and had this flash of Mark’s fingers on my pretty lace bra and my white skin underneath …
*
About that white skin: My soft body is starting to make sense, getting curves as some of the softness leaves my waist and goes to my hips. Mom says I’m getting curvier and that’s very cool, especially with no Boys’ PE to worry about. And over the months the softness at my chest changed; first there was a hardness under my nipples like a small raisin, which grew to a marble, and then my nipples starting really reacting to cold and touch. And the softness started swelling in two slight mounds as if my newly-sensitive nipples were pulling them outwards.
Back when I first discovered it, I ran to Mom and proudly showed her the tiniest improvement to prove that I was now, undeniably, growing breasts of my own! And my bras fit better and in one of them you could almost see actual breasts in the cups, not just mounds!
*
So, back to folding my bras …I got distracted with my nesting and laundry and stuff and after getting in bed that night, I stared at the ceiling and remembered my thought about Mark and my bra. My fingers slowly moved to my chest–hey, women are supposed to self-exam their breasts, right?–and my fingertips spun lazy circles around my nipples. They hardened like they do now, poking my nightie slightly, and I thought of looking pretty for Mark. What would I wear on our first date? I thought of a white lace dress in Macy’s that I loved but hadn’t bought, but what if we were just doing fun stuff? Mentally I selected that skirt and that top and maybe I could borrow those shoes from Celia and I thought about how I’d wear my hair, and all these thoughts were tumbling as my fingers circled.
And we’d have fun on the date, because he was smart and funny and confident and really, really male and I’d feel so delicate and protected and feminine with his arm around me and we’d smile at each other and he’d lean down and I’d close my eyes and feel his rough lips on my lips, shiny with lipgloss, and his hand would reach around my side and cup my breast and I’d put my hand over his and squeeze it gently, reassuring him that I wanted more, as his tongue danced in my mouth–
*
During the power outage, while Mom and I talked about not knowing if I’d like boys or girls or sex at all, I told her about my thoughts about Mark, and some dreams that I’d had. She smiled and hugged me and simply said, “So now you know.”
So now I know.
Got that big fat Break in the middle of the month, and early spring after those terrible March storms. But everything is taking a second place to my grades, because I got an A or an A- on every midterm except one B+. The weird thing is that all those years where C and D grades didn’t bother me, now I’m really mad at myself for the B, even if it is a plus, and I’m wondering about ways to make those minuses disappear into full A’s. And, Mrs. McKenzie, I’m not just saying that to butter you up. For the first time I have the possibility of being an A student and it feels great!
*
For Spring Break, while college kids headed to Florida, Mom and I went to Manhattan! I’d never been there before, and although I don’t know Paris or Rome, it’s hard to believe there is a greater city than New York City. The energy, the variety of people and lifestyles and cultures, and the culture …wow! We saw some Broadway shows, but the Guggenheim and the Met, and MOMA …I could do nothing but tour those museums for months. Lots of exotic food and accents and some cliché stuff, too, like cab drivers yelling at each other and, come to think of it, everybody yelling at each other! It’s just their way of life and I realized it didn’t really mean anything to them; to them it was just part of daily living. I told Mom that in NYC, yelling is the grease for the wheels of society. She laughed so hard tears came to her eyes! She said that I’m getting more poetic as I’m getting better grades and if I become an A student she won’t be able to stand my intelligent remarks.
But I still want those A’s!
*
I’m exploring medical colleges for my (far) future, in terms of what high school classes they want to see on the transcripts. Unless something radically changes with me, I still want to pursue medicine in some form. I want to make a difference.
We had the most incredible time in New York, and we felt like outlaws, because we flew there so of course I had to be Larry for Homeland Security and on the plane. But it was a small price to pay, because from the time we landed until I was back in the line at the home-bound security check, I was Larissa for the whole week! We’d planned carefully so with my hair back in the boy’s ponytail and slouching, I looked physically–at least from a distance–like a bored boy. I wore panties and a cami undershirt, but a baggy Pendleton and cargo pants. And boy’s flip-flops. Hopefully nobody would go through my suitcase because they’d find nothing but girl’s clothes!
So our plan was in two stages, getting semi-girlish for the shuttle to our hotel and then fully changing in the hotel room. But, we were able to do the whole thing at the airport, because Mom found a unisex bathroom with handicap access, big and square and just for the two of us. Mom opened my suitcase as I was already stripping out of my Larry drag–I got that term from Molly Chen. With a quick hair and makeup touch-up from Mom, we left the bathroom as mother and daughter, with me wearing flats, a denim miniskirt and a lime tank top under a white hoodie. Larissa was ready for New York!
*
Not really! Because the city was just so overwhelming! But we got a great hotel in Midtown (I tried to learn all the proper terms) and I freshened up a little bit while Mom looked at the phone book and made some calls. The first thing she did was take me to a salon for a mani-pedi–sheer bliss, but the most amazing thing was she had them put extensions on my nails before applying polish. She said I could spend the entire week grappling with long nails for the first time, and it would give her some amusement. My hands looked lovely and I couldn’t get over how pretty my feet were–it was a shame to hide my toes in flats so back at the hotel I switched to strappy sandals.
We just walked around Midtown, which has more than enough to sight-see for a week all by itself, and had a lovely Italian dinner and then we went to my first Broadway show, an incredible teen musical called Spring Awakening and I’m not even going to start talking about how fantastic it was!
*
The show brought up topics of teen sex, anxiety, rape, suicide …just a typical teen world–but in the 1890s! Mom and I went to a famous deli for ice cream sundaes afterward and talked about the show. I was embarrassed at first until I realized that all the people around us were talking so casually about some pretty racy subjects (including some illegal ones!) that I opened up to Mom.
I told her how hard it was continuing the Larry thing, and the thought of two more months–half of April, all of May and half of June–was killing me. “That’s like forty more times I’ve got to be Larry!” I moaned to her. Mom said she had a maybe surprise, since my grades were so outstanding. I’d never known this because I was never in the good students’ world before, but it might be possible that I could take an earlier dismissal from school. It meant getting the teachers to sign off on me taking the finals earlier. I qualified for it now, and with my doctors creating the right kind of letter, I could get out earlier for ‘medical reasons’ and maybe be out by the end of May. The only downside would be that my friends would still be stuck in school, but they’d understand …all of my girlfriends knew how hard it was to keep up the pretense of Larry.
*
The weather was cool-ish when we got there with some rain during the first night but after that it got nicer and nicer, part of that early spring, until it was almost hot by the day we left. Mom had an old friend from nursing college that she’d kept in touch with. I vaguely remembered her from stories Mom occasionally told. Her name was Joan and like a lot of women, she was divorced and living with a new boyfriend. They had a really cool apartment on the edge of ‘the Garment District’–do I sound like a New Yorker? We visited her the first full day we were there when she got off shift, and she was a delightful lady but Mom kidded her (maybe) that she was working ER too much because she was kind of skittish. She said there’d been some rapes near her hospital and everybody was skittish. It made me think again about how casually I’d threatened Celia with rape oh, so long ago. I was mortified to remember.
Joan either didn’t know about Larry or had been briefed or just took things in stride because she completely accepted me as Mom’s daughter Larissa. We laughed and Mom even let me have a glass of wine when it looked like we were settling in for a long night. Finally her boyfriend came home, an Italian guy named Marco–of course–who worked in the fashion industry, and we said goodbye, but as a lovely parting gift, Marco gave us the addresses of a couple of places with insanely cheap designer clothes, and told us the procedure to get his discount!
*
The next day we did a little cruise around the Statue of Liberty and then headed back to the Garment District and omigod would my girlfriends go crazy there! I knew that money was tight for us, especially with this vacation, but Mom said there were some things that we’d just have to take advantage of.
I’d remarked on how smartly dressed the businesswomen were in Midtown; Mom surprised me by finding and then buying for me a bankers’ striped black suit, with a skirt, slacks, and jacket, and a white satin blouse that just matched the whole thing. Mom said it would be for things like a court appearance to change my name, and I had to go along with that!
At some point I’d mentioned West Side Story and how pretty Maria was; Mom chuckled and said we weren’t Hispanic–neither was Natalie Wood, for that matter–but she found me a white lacy peasant’s blouse and a colorful mid-calf length skirt and said it was ‘walk in the park-wear’ for me. And we picked up some denim skirts and tops, but they were so ridiculously cheap–$5 for a top and $9 for skirts!–that it was justified.
Mom said I’d need some shoes; Marco had told her where to go for those, too. So I got my first pair of black high-heel pumps and some others and I asked her how we were going to pack all this but she had it figured out. The next stop was one of those hole-in-the-wall instant tailor places, and she had my business suit fitted–I especially loved the slacks and high-heels–and we’d get it the next day. Then we stopped at a UPS store and bought a flat box and labels and I knew what was up: With the airlines charging for bags–and extra bags were insanely pricey–we were going to box up all of our NYC souvenirs, clothes, and shoes, and ship them to ourselves!
*
I was sorry to leave New York; it was an incredible experience but also an incredible growth experience for both of us. For the first time, ever, we were truly mother and daughter every second of the day. I woke up in the morning in a nightie, showered, did my hair and makeup and chose a cute skirt and top and shoes, grabbed my purse and headed out. And that’s exactly what Mom did, too; we were just two females getting ready.
We spent the whole day together as mother and daughter. I learned so much about life and about being female from her and from watching other girls and women. I shouldn’t admit it, but I even loved the sexist catcalls from construction workers, like ‘Hey, pretty lady’ and ‘Hey, babe’ and even ‘Hola, chica!–all to me! It was incredibly exciting to me because it validated that I was a pretty girl. Nobody saw a boy–nobody!–not the waiters that called me ‘mademoiselle’ or the clerks who said, ‘yes, miss?’ and by midweek, any residual fear I had that I could be ‘read’ as a boy vanished. By the end of the week it dawned on me that I’d spent several days–I mean, full, 24-hour days–without even thinking of myself as male.
*
Coming back home was an adventure, with me being even more of an outlaw. We’d boxed up everything and had it ready for the UPS courier and I sighed after my pretty things left in the truck, because it meant I should probably remove my nail polish and long nails. Mom had a proposition.
“Honey, your nails are so pretty, and I know you’d like to keep them right up until school on Monday,” she began, and I couldn’t help it; I burst into tears at the thought of being Larry.
She calmed me down and said, “Here’s my thought, and I didn’t bring it up on the way out because if anything backfired we’d lose the whole vacation. I don’t foresee any problems, but even if they were, so what if we’re delayed getting home?”
I said that would even be a plus for me because of less ‘Larry-time’.
She made a face and went on. “Here’s the idea, similar to what we did on the way here. Larry’s ponytail, and you can stick on a Yankees cap if you want. Wear your pretty lingerie and a tank you like, and the same shirt and pants you wore out here. Wear socks and your trainers.”
I’d brought them for walking as a boy but hadn’t used them.
She explained, “When you have to take your shoes off at Security, your socks will hide your pretty toenail polish. Wear those little gloves I found for you at that Armenian shop; they’ll look like a Goth or punk boy would wear and will hide your fingernails. We clear Security and should have an hour before boarding. We’ll go to the airline desk and get the manager or supervisor and I will show him your documentation from the hospital.”
My doctors had thoughtfully provided letters on the hospital letterhead explaining that I was medically diagnosed as transgendered and was under treatment. Mom had also obtained a letter from the airline itself–it only arrived two days before we left–that stated their acceptance, subject to TSA and Homeland Security regulations. That’s why I had to go through Security as Larry. But the airline didn’t care who or what I was as long as my seat was paid for and my butt was in it!
So that’s what we did. Larry slumped his way through Security without problem–I couldn’t believe how slick it had been!–and then we were referred to the supervisor, an older lady named Ruth Steegmuller. For some reason her last name scared me, but one call and ten minutes later, the supervisor agreed, but seemed skeptical.
We found another handicap-unisex-family changing room and I had my things ready on the top of my carry-on. Off came the socks and trainers and pants and Pendleton. On went pink flip-flops, denim skirt, and heather-gray hoodie with ‘Hollister’ in pink letters. I already had a light pink tank top that had ‘NYC’ in rhinestones. I fluffed out my hair and put on makeup and my earrings. We’d managed to find a big assortment of magnetic earrings in a lot of styles from a little vendor in Greenwich Village, so I wore small hoops.
You could have knocked over Ruth Steegmuller with a feather! She stared as we walked to her–I had my regular walk, as Larissa, of course–and then a huge smile broke out like sun after a storm.
She leaned forward so only we could hear and say, “If I didn’t know better I’d swear it wasn’t possible! You are a lovely young lady, and I wish all the best to you in your new life!”
Even the hour delay after we boarded couldn’t dim my great mood from her comment!
*
We had the rest of Saturday evening at home, because of the time difference. Celia wanted to come over–we’d texted about it while I was in NYC–and so we ordered pizza. Mom, of course, sniffed that “it wasn’t as good as Ray’s” and I shot back, “Yeah, but what is?” and we laughed together, we ‘women of the world’ while Celia just rolled her eyes.
Celia went nuts when she saw my fingernails and said she’d help me remove them tomorrow night–the only cloud on the evening–and she went super nuts when we told her about the discounts in the Garment District. She thought Mom was brilliant for shipping our purchases instead of paying the airline, and she seemed pleased (a bit) at the Statue of Liberty keychain I’d brought back for her. I didn’t tell her that her real gift was in the UPS box–two killer tops!
*
A groggy Sunday with unpacking and then Celia came over again around five with some tools. She’d had some experience removing nail extensions and we were going to try to shorten them but still leave them longer than Larry typically had his nails. Then she scrupulously removed every trace of polish; I did my toes later that night because they weren’t as critical. Mom had gently suggested I start ‘dialing Larissa down and dialing Larry up’ during the evening so it wasn’t such a shock tomorrow morning. I realized she was right, because at first I couldn’t even do Larry. I’d been Larissa around-the-clock for nine days. It had been heaven but it messed up my ability to fake boyhood. Nothing had been required at Security except the sullen walk and downcast eyes and a couple of bored ‘no’ answers to their questions. So I needed the extra time to get Larry back.
*
At school I work hard to maintain the image of a boy; I’m so nervous that I’ll give myself away. I keep checking with Celia and Molly that ‘Larry’s in place’ and much as I hate it, I seem to be doing it okay. So I’m picking right up with my classes, and my friends, and everything seems like it might be on an even keel until the end of the school year. I just have to keep it going until then, and then Larry goes away forever.
I really hope I can get that early release; no word, yet.
End of Part 4
Bad enough I have to write a diary for school. So why did I write another one? To tell the truth …
I finally heard about the early release. I’m going to get it! I think …the district approved it, the school approved it, but now it’s ‘subject to teacher availability’ which means if any teacher chose to keep me the full year, they could just not be ‘available’ for my final and grading.
*
Mom’s gotten a promotion at the hospital with more paperwork and less legwork, the way she says it. The main thing is that she’ll have more regular hours, be home at the same time most nights, and be able to plan vacations. Our New York trip was so incredible I can’t imagine what she’ll come up with next!
*
Just got the approval of all of my teachers. I’ve taken three finals and got A’s, so maybe my good luck will hold!
*
Two more down, an A and an A-. One final left, and a group presentation in another class, and I’m done.
*
Aced it ( I think!) and the group presentation went well. I won’t say what class it was, but it was a karma thing–one of the three of us was a slacker, like I used to be, and was just dead wood. So the other girl and I had to double-up our work to cover for him. No wonder people didn’t like the old me–if they even knew the old me.
*
Things are going really good with my friends except for one exception. I got kind of in the middle of a romantic triangle and I didn’t even know it, until my friend told me how badly it hurt. So I think I cleaned up the confusion, because that’s all it was, and everything seems fine now.
*
I want to go on record about the early release. I’m not doing it because I don’t like school. And I’m not writing this part to ‘butter up’ Mrs. McKenzie! I’ve grown to love school. I always shied away from the challenge, but the challenge is the fun part. Each test is like a mountain to climb, and each one needs a different set of climbing tools (math tools, English tools, whatever) and each climb is difficult and different, but at the end you get as high on the mountain as were your efforts. And when you get to the top, it’s such a great feeling!
So I’m not getting out of school early because I don’t like school, but for some other, completely unrelated personal (and medical) reasons. Just wanted to state that for the record.
*
And so this has been my diary or journal, and it’s not stupid. It might be one entry short because of the early release, but I hope that won’t be held against me.
I’ve learned a lot about myself, about life, and …just everything. This has been a transformative year for me and for my family and friends, and I feel ready to face high school and life!
Sincerely, Larry Hanson.
I was getting concerned about keeping up the Larry thing at school. Oh, I could slump and shuffle all I wanted, but the plain fact is that my body was getting curvier. My breasts were developing–Yay!–and my butt was getting rounder. I had to find baggier and baggier clothes, which is getting to be a problem as we had an early spring and the days were getting hotter. All of the kids at school wore less and less, like girls in tanks and guys in tees, and there I am in a long-sleeved Pendleton.
*
Then, weirdness hit. I was at Celia’s with Monica and Jeannie, a girl from a Catholic girls’ school who knew me as Larissa and knew about Larry but had never ‘met him’, and Monica was being strange to me. It was like I wasn’t in the room. Finally the cold shoulder treatment was obvious to everybody and I said, “Mon, have I done something wrong? Or not done something right?”
She kind of sniffed at me and said it was nothing, but Celia and Jeannie wanted to know, too, and Monica said the most bizarre thing.”I wonder if you only became a girl so you could steal my boyfriend.”
I frowned, stunned, and looked at the others; they were as mystified as I was.
Celia said, “But you and Rick are going strong, right?”
Monica’s voice caught a little bit. “I’ve been kind of faking it with you guys. We’re in a …weird place.” She looked at me. “He likes Larry.”
All three of us cried out, “What?”
Monica nodded, on the edge of tears. “He said there was something going on with him, that he thought Larry was ‘cute’, and it made him think that maybe he was gay, and that it wasn’t fair to me because he really …he said he really loves me …” She broke down and we all rushed to hug her and console her, even me. Celia gave me an advisory look and I pulled back at the last second.
I said, “Mon, I haven’t said or done anything …I mean, I haven’t even talked to Rick. Ever. I don’t have any classes with him …well, we had Math last year, but nothing this year. I’ve only been happy that you and he were together. I’ve never even talked to him!” I protested again.
Celia said, “Didn’t you talk to him about asking Monica to the Ball?”
“No, because I don’t know the guy!” I protested. “I know guys who know him, so I asked them, and worked it that way.”
Monica sniffed. “You haven’t talked to him?”
“Monica, I swear it, on my life, on my mother’s life, I’ve never said anything to Rick since maybe, ‘pass me the papers’ in Math last year. If I even said that. I didn’t even go to a lot of classes back then, remember?”
Celia nodded, looked at Monica and said, “So what’s he talking about?”
Mon said, “I told you. He’s always seemed like a real straight guy …I don’t mean the obvious …I mean, you know, no BS. I don’t get it.”
“I do,” I said, frowning as I thought. “I don’t think or feel like guys do, but I do have a pretty good idea about how they think and feel. What they say and what they don’t say and what they mean.”
“She’s kind of like our own undercover spy,” Celia grinned.
“Kind of,” I smiled back, “but it’s unpleasant on a daily basis. Anyway, from what I know about Rick, you’re right, Mon. He really is a straight shooter. A really good guy. Um …does he look at other girls?”
“Well, he says he doesn’t …I mean, he never says anything like ‘whoa, check her out’. But I’ve seen him looking. Like at the mall or something.”
I thought and said, “Is he like …the two of you are some place alone and he’s totally focused on you? Like alone at the beach or a picnic or something?”
“God, yes!” Monica smiled. “We had this special place in the park, for our one month, you know, and …” She stopped abruptly. “So, yeah.” The other girls hid their giggles.
I nodded. “And you’re like at the mall or talking in the halls at school and he’s, like, distracted?” She nodded. I nodded back. “But he doesn’t say anything about what’s distracting him?”
“Yes. We’ve almost gotten in fights about it because I’d say, like, ‘are you listening to me?’ and it just messes things up.”
“I think I might know what’s up,” I smiled. “Monica, he’s really into you and he’s a good guy. Look, all teenage boys–and probably all grown-up men–look at girls. All the time. Non-stop. They can’t help it. It’s built into their machinery. It’s just one of the ways I knew I wasn’t like them.”
“Got that right,” Celia said and poked me in the shoulder. “Mr. Macho.”
“This is so weird,” Jeannie said. “I know Larissa and I’ve never met Larry and I can’t for a second believe that you’re getting away with pretending to be a boy at school.”
Celia and Monica both told her to ‘believe it’, and I took it as a good sign that Monica was at least speaking about me again. I went on, “Look, when a guy’s still immature, he is going, ‘whoa, check her out!’ all the time, out loud. It’s one way they kind of validate themselves as guys, or think they have to. But when a guy is a little more under control, more considerate, his brain is going ‘whoa, check her out!’ all the time–‘cause he can’t control that–but he doesn’t say anything because he’s more mature, and he’s into you. But he’s distracted–especially at the mall or school or wherever there’s a lot of girls–and his brain can’t handle the overload.” I grinned at Monica. “Just don’t take him into Hollister or Abercrombie.”
“Omigod!” she gasped. “You’re right! He totally zoned out in Hollister.”
Celia said, “But he’s a good guy and doesn’t say anything to hurt your feelings.”
I said, “And you really can’t blame him; he can’t help it–it’s just the way males are wired. His brain is automatically scanning girls left and right and it’s all this data going in and–” I stopped myself, shocked by what I’d just realized. My mouth was open and I looked at the girls.
Celia’s eyes were wide; she’d realized it, too. “Oh …my …God!”
“What?” from Jeannie and Monica.
Celia looked at me and slowly nodded. “You …he thinks you …omigod!”
“Yes, yes; omigod, omigod, what?” Monica almost screamed.
Celia said, “He’s broken through the Larry barrier.”
I snorted at that but nodded while Celia explained. “Rick probably doesn’t know Larry very well, if he remembers him at all. Sorry, but it’s true,” she said, and I nodded agreeably. “But he must have seen Larry walking down the hall and somehow …saw Larissa. Maybe the light caught her or maybe she–let–her–guard–down!” Celia punched my shoulder on each of those last words.
“Ow!” I said, grabbing my shoulder. “It’s not my fault!”
Jeannie said, “I don’t know anybody involved, but let me see if I got it.” To me, she said, “All the kids have known you–I mean, known Larry–for like, forever. And so they kind of mentally have a slot for you in their heads, a category. But somehow Rick saw you fresh, like a new girl at school, and his brain saw …well, the new girl at school?”
Celia and I nodded.
Jeannie nodded, too. “We had a girl, April Sanchez. Little nothing, meek and mild, and this year she’s suddenly all Goth and in your face. Nobody recognized her; we couldn’t make her be little April in our heads.”
Monica said, “So he looked at you and saw a cute girl. I get that; I see it, too …so what’s this gay thing?”
I said, “I think his rational brain–the tiny part that isn’t full of raging male hormones–kicked in and said ‘But that’s Larry Hanson; you had class with him last year’ and–”
Celia took over, excited. “–and that was enough to kick what he saw back to the old slot, the old Larry category! And so his brain starts locking up.” She took on a gruff, fake boy’s voice, taking both sides of an argument. “Whoa, check her out! Wait a minute, that’s Larry, we did Math last year. But she’s a babe! No, no, man, she’s a dude! No, she’s a babe, I know a babe when Little Rick stands up and salutes.”
“Celia!” Monica shouted, laughing.
Celia went on with her boy-brain dialogue. “No, man, she’s a dude–we had PE together. Oh, God, why is Little Rick becoming Big Rick?”
“Celia!” I shouted and poked her shoulder.
She grabbed it, giggled, and went on with the boy’s voice. “But I’m turned on by a dude …omigod, I must be gay!”
I said, “And that’s when the extra-special good guy part of him kicked in. Poor guy’s probably staying up at night wondering why he was attracted to a boy, and wondering about other boys, if he feels the same way. Gotta be hell for him.”
“Serves him right for looking,” Monica said.
“No, Mon; he can’t help it; no guy can. You might as well get upset at a dog sniffing a tree.” That brought giggles. “But think how miserable, how confused he must be. He might really think he’s gay. But he’s a good guy, like I said. He really cares for you, and the good guy voice says,” I glanced at Celia, then put my hands together like in prayer and said piously, “Monica’s much too nice a girl to be lying to, if I’m gay.”
Jeannie said, “You’ve gotta tell him.”
“Tell him what?” Celia said. “That he’s wrong and right, that he’s not gay; Larissa is a babe? That will blow her cover at school.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want Monica to be hurting. Or Rick to have to go on thinking something wrong about himself.”
Celia said, “We’ve gotta tell him, but how?”
Jeannie said, “Swear him to secrecy?”
Monica said, “I could threaten to break up with him if he tells about Larissa?”
I shook my head. “If we come right out and talk with him about it, he’ll know that his deepest secret was spilled by Monica. That’ll break them up for sure.”
“For sure,” Monica nodded morosely.
“Guys are funny; you can’t go straight at them to teach them something …unless you’re a car, I guess. If any of us talk to him–even beyond the betrayal of trust issue–he’ll still think it’s a setup.”
Jeannie said, “Larissa, come on. He just has to meet the real you to know that you’re really a girl.”
“Yeah, but he might still feel betrayed. I mean, as a guy having a guy become a girl, or thinking about a girl spy pretending to be a boy, like we said. He’s got find out on his own, in a way that he won’t tell anyone. Hmm. We know what the problem is; let me think on it for a little bit. There’s gotta be a way for him to put all the pieces together …”
“In the meantime,” Monica said, in a small voice. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch, Larissa.”
“Oh, sweetie, you were hurting!” I said as we hugged.
*
The very next day found the answer. I was spending the day with Molly, and she’d said it was high time that I met Tommy, her gay older brother. We took a bus to a trendy part of downtown–I really wanted to hit some of the street’s boutiques–and got to the apartment where we were welcomed with shrill cries by her brother.
Tommy was a male version of Molly in that he was very short, but very buff. Tanned, razored-short hair, white muscle-tee and black pants and boots. He had a nice apartment with a boyfriend who was ‘at the salon’; he was a hairdresser. It was weird being in a place that had a noticeably feminine feel to the decorations, like throw pillows, scarves on the lamps, floral arrangements, and yet scary masculine stuff, too–like the two-foot high erect penis sculpture on the glass table. All around were little sculptures or statues of naked men with erect penises, and there was a garish painting of Mick Jagger, I think, with lipsticked mouth open and looming, like he was going to devour you. I realized with a blush that to the gay males looking at it, it looked like Mick could be about to kiss you or go down on you!
*
We were having a great time, drinking tea and Molly and I telling silly stories from school and Tommy telling incredible stories about his work as an EMT. It was kind of interesting the way his voice was all light and effeminate when he talked about things in general, but his voice got serious and more masculine when he talked about his medical work. It wasn’t as radical or silly as Celia imitating Rick’s brain talking to itself, but it showed that being an EMT meant a great deal to him.
I had no idea that he had such a serious job; the way Molly mentioned him he always seemed like the cliché of the free-floating gay man. But it was an expensive apartment, and he had an important job and his boyfriend Denny wasn’t just ‘at’ the salon, he owned the thing–and not just any salon; he owned Petra, the hottest salon in the city!
Then Molly said, “I was telling Larissa about Jessica.”
Oh, did that set him off! Wildly improbable tales and we were laughing so hard that tea came out my nose!
Tommy leaped up with some tissues. “Here, Rissa, blot away.”
Rissa? Molly looked at me, grinned and nodded. It just seemed to fit, and from that moment on, the Chen family called me Rissa.
*
Then came the ‘jumping off’ part. At a natural bend in the conversation, after Tommy had gone into the bedroom and come back with some photos of a drag contest he’d won years ago–or that ‘Jessica’ had won–Molly raised an eyebrow to me and said to her brother, “You know, I wanted Rissa and you to meet, because she’s transgendered.”
“What?” Tommy looked at me, then grinned. “Yeah, right. Not nice to fool around with that, Molly.”
“Why not?” I asked reasonably. “I want to know.”
His voice became serious. “Because transgendered people–truly transgendered people–have a much rougher time in life than gays. God, being gay is hard, but it’s a walk in the park compared to being truly transgendered!” He shook his head in pity or admiration.
Molly pressed, “You know some TGs, don’t you?”
“A few. Only one real one, though.”
“What do you mean one ‘real’ but you know a few?” I asked.
His voice was sliding into his medical persona, tinged with his gay world knowledge. “I know three. One was a very pretty boy–I mean, gorgeous! –who was at the Queen. Oh, that’s the Queen Mary out on Benton Boulevard. It’s the heart of the drag community.”
I was surprised. “I thought it was …it’ll sound silly …for sailors.”
Tommy suppressed a chuckle. “Well, there’s no lack of seamen there, but I’m being rude.”
“Geez, Tammy!” Molly teased.
“Jessica, puh-leeze …but you’re right, Mol; that’s something Tammy would say but Jessica is a Lady,” he said with pretend high-society ‘airs’. “Anyway, this boy was the hit of the show, started going 24/7–most of the performers don’t, believe it or not.”
“I thought it would be perfect for somebody transgendered,” Molly said.
“Nope,” Tommy said. “Because truly TG girls want to blend in, they want to be regular girls. Drag is all about flamboyance, about pushing the feminine envelope and bursting it open, and being fabulous!” he said, doing ‘jazz hands’. “But this boy got the operation and everything and was miserable because he was gay and now he didn’t have a penis.”
I frowned. “If he was gay, he–she–was attracted to boys, so why didn’t that work out?”
“Because a male homosexual, whether totally butch or a delicate little femme, worships his penis and those of others. I mean, just look around.” He gestured to his apartment, which was pretty obvious.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“He was unhappy. Miserable. Quit the show and disappeared.”
Molly said, “What about the other TGs you know?”
“Oh. One just thought he’d get more dates, double your pleasure, you know? And the other is doing fine, as far as I know. She was conflicted–see, right away I started talking about ‘she’ even though she was Steve when I met her. But she was so obviously a female inside. Anyway, she did drag for about six months at the Queen, made enough for treatment and quit the show. I saw her at the museum about a year later and honey, she was a woman. Had a straight boyfriend and was happier and more …real than any boy in drag, ever. So she was the only true TG I’ve ever known. They’re pretty rare.”
*
Molly looked at me and I gave her a ‘go for it’ wink. I said, “Tommy, maybe you know another one.”
He looked at us, uncomprehending.
Molly said, “Rissa is transgendered.”
I nodded.
“Bull!” Tommy said. “I told you not to fool around. Don’t make fun of trans people.”
“No, it’s true,” I said calmly. “I’m in the Gender Identity Clinic at the hospital. Got papers and everything.”
He stared. “Omigod! You think you’re a boy?”
To his shock Molly and I burst out laughing. “No, a girl!” she gasped.
Now Tommy was sure we were fooling, and it took awhile to calm him down and get him to listen as I told him a condensed version of my story, but his head was shaking as he frowned. “Not buying it, just on the surface.”
I protested again, and he said, “What about your boobs?”
I looked at Molly. “What about ‘em?” I asked.
“Stuffed, forms, whatever; how much is you?”
“Um …all of it.”
“How long have you been on hormones?”
“About two months.”
“No, I mean …wait a minute,” he frowned. “Back up. How long since you were admitted to the clinic?”
“Two months. What I said.” I wasn’t sure what he was concerned about.
“Okay. Clinic for two months. And how long have you been taking female hormones?”
“I don’t see the confusion,” I smiled and shrugged. “Two months. The doctors gave me my first shots the second day.”
He looked exasperated. “Look, it’s okay, I’m not going to bust you.” He grinned. “Get it? Bust you …no? Yeah, it was a stupid joke. Okay, before you were admitted to the clinic, how long have you been taking hormones?”
“I never did.”
He waved a hand, frustrated. “Okay. Supplements, homeopathics, whatever.”
I shook my head. “I don’t take anything. Just, you know, vitamins like I’ve been taking all my life. One-A-Day, used to be Flintstones, you know, that sort of thing.”
“The only thing you’re ingesting, in pill or liquid form, is over-the-counter multivitamins?”
“Yeah. I don’t know what brand; Mom gets ‘em.”
“Are you up for a little examination?” He was serious; I said, sure, and he went to his room and came back with his medical bag, pulled on some surgical gloves, and got his medical voice on.
“Would you please stand and pull up your shirt, exposing your abdomen?”
I was wearing tight stretchy black jeans that clung to my legs and made my butt look cute, and round-toed Mary Janes with a short heel. My top was a V-neck sweater, with broad horizontal green and heather stripes and the sleeves pushed up, and a scarf loosely wrapped around my neck.
Molly said gently, “You don’t have to do this, Rissa.”
I smiled at how easily she’d adopted my new nickname. “Actually, for no reason I can put my finger on? I do. And don’t worry. I’m examined by the doctors every week so any medical modesty is pretty much history now.”
I undid my scarf and pulled up my sweater hem with both hands to expose my tummy, and then came to a quick decision and pulled the whole thing off over my head. I stood there in bra and tight jeans and felt oddly powerful. Where the heck did that come from? Maybe because I was becoming more and more proud of my body?
Tommy was all professional. He prodded my tummy a little, gently pinched the sides, asked me to take a deep breath, hold it, then exhale, then breathe normally; and then he did something strange–he tapped me on my shoulder as he felt my tummy, and grinned.
“What was that for?” I asked.
“If you were holding your tummy in with your muscles, the tap would have distracted you and I’d have felt it. Hmm.”
He had one arm across his own tummy, palm down and dangling in the air, and rested his other elbow on the back of that hand, and rested his chin on the back of his vertical arm. I realized this was a habit to not contaminate his gloves–like I said, very professional.
Of course, he was very professionally looking at my bra. I looked at him studying my breasts, and then did another snap decision–I unclasped my bra and let it slide down my arms. Molly gasped and then shook her head in wonder. She’d seen my breasts before–as we’d tried on clothes together like all girls do–but to expose them to her brother on our first meeting?
It didn’t faze him in the least. He looked me in the eye and said, “May I?”
“Palpate away.”
Tommy grinned. “You know the terminology. Okay. I’ll be gentle but let me know if it hurts or makes you uncomfortable.”
He gave me a thorough breast exam, and nodded that I could get my bra back on. Then he had me turn around slowly and was shaking his head. I pulled my sweater back on and took a brush from my purse and fixed my hair, using my reflection in a small mirror they had mounted on the wall. Molly had said it was there to help with Feng Shui.
Tommy poured tea all around and sat back. “Am I to understand that you have taken no hormones or pills or supplements of any kind, to the best of your knowledge, until the shots and prescription at the clinic?”
“Right.”
“Have they said anything about your genetic karyotype?”
“Um …you mean like XX, XY, that sort of thing? They said I was XY, but atypical.”
“You’ve probably seen an endocrinologist. Anything they’ve said?”
“Um, no, other than everybody’s pleased with my progress. Why? What’s going on, Tommy?”
He thought for a moment, his eyes cast down and then said, “Rissa, there’s the possibility that you’re an extremely rare genetic variant. There are several feminizing conditions that ... But I’m quite familiar with all the various feminizing hormones, estrogens, progesterones, androgen blockers …the whole nine yards. So I’m telling you that, short of a genetic, biochemical anomaly, something systemic, that your breast development absolutely could not occur in two months. Minimum six to eight months, maybe, and then only if your system was predisposed to estrogen, which brings us back to a genetic anomaly. They’re beautiful, by the way.”
I was confused; I thought he meant hormones. “What are?”
“Your breasts. Perfectly shaped and right for your size and build. Which is right on the money for a thirteen-fourteen-year-old girl.”
“Okay, so what’s the problem?” Molly asked.
Tommy ignored her, looking at me. “And you still have your …?” he asked as he gestured to my crotch.
“Yes.” I blushed; I didn’t like talking about this in front of Molly. So I said so. “I don’t like being reminded of it. But, yes, I have a very small, not-terrifically-functional penis tucked away.”
“Testicles descended?”
“Never did and if they did I’d send ‘em right back where they came from,” I grinned, and got a laugh from him.
“You said ‘not-terrifically-functional’,” Tommy frowned. “Meaning …?”
I glanced at Molly and said, “Meaning all it ever worked for was urination. Nothing else.”
He held my eyes.
Molly said, “Rissa, you don’t have to–”
“Yes, I do, Mol, and thanks for that. But I trust Tommy.” I gave him a smile, and then looked back at his sister. “If this is too weird for you, maybe the powder room?”
She cracked up. “You are too considerate sometimes!” She shook her head. “I’m a big girl. Go for it.”
Tommy said in a swishy voice, “Honey, you’ll never be a big girl!”
They both chuckled and he turned back to me, his professional face on again. “Alright. Not-terrifically functional …”
I nodded. “I’ve discussed this with the doctors already, so I know what you’re asking. I have never had an erection in my life. Ever. I have never had what you call ‘morning wood’. To the best of my knowledge, confirmed by my mother, I have never had a nocturnal emission.”
His face was impassive, his eyes unreadable. Then he said one word, not as a question. “Ever.”
“Ever,” I said, holding his eyes.
“Alright,” Tommy let out a whoosh of air. “I’m not going to put you through a penile exam. But barring the most incredible hoax ever–and Molly would never live to drive a car if she did!” He mock-glared at his sister. “Barring that, if you truly were born a boy, genetically XY, and fully feel mentally and emotionally as the female you present, I would have to say you are the most stunning transgendered male-to-female I have ever encountered. No wonder the clinic accepted you so quickly.”
“I didn’t say that they did,” I said, confused again.
“You said they gave you shots the second day; often applicants wait six months before being accepted and started on a course of treatment.”
I was stunned. “Oh.” I looked at Molly, who shrugged. To Tommy I said, “Just lucky …I guess?”
He laughed. “I’m curious, Rissa, however do you pull off the boy act at school?”
“Drab baggy clothes, hair back in a low ponytail, shuffle and slump,” I grinned.
“Voice?”
“Larry never said much, just what Mom calls ‘monosyllabic grunts’. And I watch the melody. You know, of my voice.”
He nodded. “You’re very intelligent, and aware and astute.” Then in a totally flamboyant voice, he said, “And totally fabulous!” which made us all laugh.
When we’d finished, he said, back in the medical tone, “What about boys?”
“Um …I think I like them,” I blushed.
“Omigod!” Molly said. “Who? You’ve got to tell me! I know you, Rissa! You’ve got someone in mind–who is it?”
“Mark Brashear,” I said softly.
Her grin was huge. “Way to go, girl!” Molly said. To her brother she said, “Total babe. Sports hero with brains, great body, face like Brad Pitt.”
“Not Pitt,” I said quickly. “Pitt had those big lips. Weird.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said, “but with his shirt off, who looked at his lips?”
We all chuckled and then I frowned.
“What’s up?” Molly said.
So I told them about Rick, and my problem. Tommy agreed with me in my ‘diagnosis’, and we got onto other things, and suddenly Molly said, “Wait a minute. I’ll tell Rick! He’s in History with me.”
Tommy and I both shook our heads. He said, “Won’t work. Guys–especially dudes–can’t be told, they have to put two and two together themselves.” He echoed what I’d told the girls last night. Then he said, “I might have a way, but you’ll need to work together on it.”
We all grinned as he explained.
*
Rick never stood a chance. We could work it because Molly and Rick were in a History study group together. I had my cell phone and she had primed hers with a text that she would send to me when it was the right time. When it was the right time–both of them in a far corner of the study hall–she triggered the text with her phone under the table, just by touch. It was my signal to wait one minute, to allow her to get her phone back in her purse, and then call. She’d have to control the flow of the conversation but what she told me later, this is what happened:
Her phone rang. She picked it up and answered. “Hi, Larry.” She said everything casually as if it were no big deal. She said that as soon as she said my old name, Rick jerked a little and started eavesdropping. I don’t need to write what I said, because the effect on Rick was what she said, and that’s what had been orchestrated.
–Nothing. History study group. Roaring Twenties, whoop-de-do.
–Yeah. Totally. What? Oh, with Celia and Monica? Cool.
She said the mention of Monica also jolted him but she pretended not to notice. She spun slightly in her chair as if being private, but could see his reflection in the glass. She said his eyes were boring into her back. She allowed her voice to change gradually, from the offhand way of talking to Larry, a boy, to the unmistakable way girls talked with one another.
–No, really? That’s so hot! I wish I’d been there. No, my mom’s on my case. So what did you get?
–What? I love that store! God, you’re so lucky.
–Can I borrow it? Come on, Rissa, I saw that skirt first! You owe me!
–Seriously? God, I bet it looks killer on you. With your legs? You should wear it with your new heels. No, the new ones. You know, the cute black pumps? Three-inch heel?
–Don’t I know it. I’ll never have legs as long as yours …oh, you’re so sweet! Shit, Tupperman’s looking at me. Gotta go. Love ya, Rissa! Bye!
She hung up and spun back to the table as if it were no biggie. She said Rick kind of cleared his voice and said, “You’re lucky Tupperman didn’t bust you.”
She grinned at him. “One of the advantages of being an A student–you can get away with more!”
He paused and said with an obviously false, forced casualness, “Who’s …if you don’t mind me asking …who’s Rissa?”
“Uh …just a girlfriend,” she tossed off, but made it look cagey.
“Oh. I misunderstood. I thought you answered and it was Larry. Um …Hanson. You know him.”
“Yeah, I know.”
And here was the tricky part. It all hinged on Molly’s acting ability. She had to look like she was at war with herself and then decide to ‘break confidence’. She leaned over and said, “I’m sorry you overheard that. Um …I’m in a weird position, but I’ve got to swear you to secrecy now that you know.”
He didn’t know anything, really, but swore. She really pressed him on it, saying it could really mess up people’s lives if he told anyone. He swore and they leaned close.
“Larry Hanson …” She stuck her head up and looked around and then whispered, “is really a girl.” She said his eyes widened so much it looked like he was falling over. “Always was a girl. It’s a medical thing, and her mom and her have been doing doctors and doctors and doctors and they’ve finally fixed the problem. Some …thing from birth, sort of a birth defect but not–you know, she’s not retarded or anything. But the school refused to correct her records until she gets the legal name change and can’t get that until the doctors sign something which they couldn’t do before because she was so young …”
He whispered–fiercely, she said, “Are you saying that all this time Larry Hanson has been a girl?” She nodded like it was no big deal. “But he’s been in PE!”
“Did you see …anything?”
“Well, no …” He frowned. “But all this time he’s been a boy at school.”
She nodded. “It’s the school district policy and it sucks. Poor Rissa’s had to dress up like a boy, and they said she should do anything to keep the masquerade going to the end of the year. So that’s why she slumps and shuffles around.”
“But she goes into the boys’ bathrooms!”
“Have you seen her there?”
“Sure! Lots of …no, wait …” More frowns. “I just assumed …” He shook his head. “I guess I haven’t. Um …so she’s a girl, huh?”
“Yeah. As soon as she gets home, she can be herself. She’s one of my best friends. Of course, her BFF is Celia–you know, Celia Duran?–and that’s okay. But I love her. Look, you can’t tell anybody,” she said, worried.
“No, I won’t. I swore I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”
She said there was this goofy grin spreading that he couldn’t control. “Um …her name is Rissa?”
“Well, her full name is Larissa but to all of us, she’s Rissa.”
“Hmm. Rissa. That must be where the ‘Larry’ thing came from …Yeah, makes sense,” he nodded, and she knew he was trying to mask his smile.
*
The other girls absolutely loved the name ‘Rissa’. Celia said it made a funny kind of sense, like in French, ‘La Rissa’, as in The Rissa. Jeannie said there’s a guy from Wu-Tang Clan named ‘The RZA’ almost pronounced the same, so she grinned and said I had ‘street cred’.
The girls all loved the ‘operation’ we performed on Rick, and Celia spoke for the others when she said, “If she wants to, Molly Chen can hang with us anytime. She’s way cool!” And she is, too.
But for the thing to work, they all had to call me Rissa from now on, and they all agreed. Mom said she might or might not, since she did like ‘Larissa’, but now we had to sit back and wait.
*
The last week of my school year (the others had four to go), I was walking down the hall on the way to lunch when Monica stepped in front of me and dragged Rick with her; they were holding hands and she controlled him by kind of straight-arming that hand, pulling it down to make her desires known. She gave me a look that was one of those ‘we’re both in on the secret but he can’t know that’ looks.
“Rick has something he’d like to say,” Monica said.
Silence. Rick kind of squirmed. He got his arm pulled straight down. “Okay! Geez! Look, um …” This was where he would have said my name but didn’t; I understood. “See, the deal is …I kind of found out about you.”
I played dumb, or maybe hard-to-get. “Found out?”
He nodded. “I found out from Molly Chen. Only don’t blame her, okay? It wasn’t her fault. I was eavesdropping.”
I looked around; kids were milling past us and I edged towards some double-doors in a sort of alcove that gave us some privacy.
“Uh …what did Molly say?” I kept my voice neutral.
“Don’t get mad at her, okay? Like I said, I was listening in. You called her a couple of days ago and we were going over our History presentation.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember.” I frowned like it was just a vague memory.
“Come on, Rick,” Monica said with some exasperation.
He shrugged. “She took your call–Tupperman saw her but she hung up before he busted her. And she turned her back to me and spoke quietly, but I ...I listened in. You’d gone shopping, and you two talked about …some clothes?”
“Um …I remember,” I said, and tried to manufacture a blush.
Monica spoke to him like a mother to a child. “Rick, please just …” She looked around and lowered her voice. “Please just say it, or ask it, or whatever, because I’ve got something to say after you do.”
He looked at her, a little surprised, and then turned to me and said very quietly, “I found out that you’re a girl.”
“Oh.” I said this as neutrally as I could. “And …well, what did you think?”
He was sheepish. “Can I be honest?”
“Duh!” Monica almost exploded. “Yes, be honest, you jerk!”
“At first I thought there was some misunderstanding, but now that I look at you–I mean, really look at you–it’s like so obvious!”
“What is?” I said. “I’m not being dumb but I think you need to tell me exactly what is obvious to you.”
He leaned in and whispered, “That you’re a chick!”
We all leaned back quickly on that statement and looked around.
I frowned, pretending that I was wrestling with myself, and then looked him in the eyes and quietly said, “Yes, Rick, I am.”
Monica jumped in. “Can I say something?” We both nodded, and she turned to me. “Rissa, I haven’t told him anything–I mean, you can just tell by what he just said.”
I smiled at her. “I know you didn’t, Mon. It’s cool.”
“So can I tell him now?”
He turned to her. “You knew?”
I said, “Rick, Monica’s one of my closest friends. Of course she knew about me. For months and months.”
To her, he said, “You didn’t say anything. I came to you with this stuff I heard from Molly and you just went blink-blink like you didn’t know anything.”
I jumped in. ‘Rick, she’s a good friend and can keep a secret. Right now you probably think she was stringing you along or something, but it wasn’t like that, really. Think about the hard position Monica got put in! She knows about me and would not tell my secret to anyone, and then comes her boyfriend and he’s found out the truth but she can’t confirm it because that’s like breaking her trust with me.”
Monica sounded very apologetic. “Rick, I really wanted to, really, really, but I couldn’t break my promise to Rissa. It’s too important. It’s not like telling Rissa that Celia already bought her something for her birthday. You know, a little broken confidence thing like that. This is huge.”
“This could kill me,” I said to Rick, “or worse. Seriously. Can you imagine what Mackie would do if he found out that I’m a girl?”
His eyes widened as he considered, and he nodded. “Good thing he’s in jail.”
“Yeah, but for how long?” Monica said.
I let out a big breath. “I don’t know what all Molly told you–and don’t worry; I’m not mad at her–but the truth is that I have a medical condition where I’m not …fully male or female. It’s not like a Jerry Springer type of thing. But the doctors had to wait until my body developed in the way it wanted …it’s easiest to think of it as just a very slow development, like …well, almost everybody else their body decides in nine months, in the womb.”
“XX or XY chromosomes,” he nodded. “We studied it.”
“Yeah, me, too, only sometimes things aren’t as easy as XX or XY. Instead of nine months, it was taking about thirteen-fourteen years. Like waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“But why even go through life as Larry, then? Why not be, I don’t know …neutral, with a unisex name like Dana or Kelly or something?”
Monica said, “Rick, baby …look across the hall.” She pointed to the two bathroom entrances. “Boys, Girls. Even a Dana or Kelly would have to pick one or the other.”
“But then why not be raised a girl?”
I sighed. “Doctors say it’s easier to go from boy to girl, way easier than from girl to boy. In terms of culture, you know–boy culture versus girl culture. You know those transsexuals like on Springer or Maury?” He nodded. “You ever wonder why it’s nearly all boys that became girls, not girls that became boys?” He frowned and shrugged. “It’s always way easier to go boy to girl than the other way.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” he said. “And they were total guys when they started.”
Inwardly I cheered. I’d used the word ‘transsexuals’ and ‘Springer’ to distance myself from what I was, because I knew that it could be argued that I was no different from a transgendered boy on those shows. But Rick had made the necessary mental leap of assigning categories that kept us separate. There was a Rissa category over here, and a TS/TG category over there. Because if I was perceived by him as ever having been a boy, he could still have the ‘omigod, I’m gay!’ thoughts that started this whole thing. Plus, this way it gave me more credibility.
“Wow,” Rick was saying. “So that’s why you’ve been kind of under the radar all this time.”
I nodded. “That’s the way I’ve had to live it. I screwed up badly last year when I started hanging out with Mackie, thinking that, well, if I’m supposed to be a boy, I have to be tough. But I didn’t feel like a boy, I never thought like a boy, so I overcompensated.”
“Yeah, you were a little asshole, along with Mackie and Steve. Two bigger assholes.”
Monica said, “I heard Steve’s walking with crutches but will always drag one foot.”
That rocked me a little bit. He was dumb and he was mean, but I never wanted him crippled. I swallowed. “Fortunately my body finally …well, grew up. And it said, basically, ‘yes, I’m a girl, hel-lo!’”
Monica grinned. “Because that’s the best thing to be!”
At that point I formally released Monica from ‘her vow of silence’ about me, and the two of them walked off, still holding hands but a lot closer than before.
Just before he left, Rick said, “Well, looking at you now, I can’t see how I ever thought you were a dude. You’re really pretty, in a …drabbed down-dude kind of way.” He grinned. “Over the summer, maybe I’ll get to really meet Rissa?”
“Count on it,” I smiled back, watching them go, wondering if I would ever find a boy as sweet as Rick.
End of Part 5
Bad enough I have to write a diary for school. So why did I write another one? To tell the truth …
(no school entry needed)
So what’s the opposite of a boy like Rick? A boy like Mackie. All along I’ve been afraid that he’d get out of Juvie, show up at school, and see me. What would somebody like Mackie do? At the very least, shout out to everybody that I was a boy pretending to be a girl. At the most …well, I shuddered to think. Beat me up, certainly, but he might force me to perform oral sex on him, or even try to rape me anally. It seems over-the-top, but he’s not a virgin (I’m pretty sure) and he’s a major male chauvinist and would want to dominate me and that would be forcing me to go down on him.
One of the most amazing things I’ve learned is how many junior high girls go down on their boyfriends and don’t consider it to be sex. Sure, they can’t get pregnant that way, but it seems to send so many wrong signals to the boy and the girl …or maybe I’m a prude.
*
I don’t think I’m a prude. I mean, I’ve been having more erotic dreams than ever in my life. They’re all like something out of romance novels, though, with slow-motion walks and wind blowing my long dress around me, and deserted beaches and once, in a mansion. And they’re not all with Mark Brashear, either; the other day Molly and I were shopping and we saw a guy and I could tell she felt it, too–that electric jolt and then your body starts reacting, nipples going hard and groin going soft (and maybe my brain, too). And I dreamed about that guy that night. I bet Molly did, too!
*
But Mackie …Mackie is scary stuff. He’s mean, thinks the world owes him, thinks he’s better than everybody else–and he’s intelligent. Steve was those three things without the intelligence. I’m sorry he was crippled but I only hope he might learn to be a better person.
So no matter how much fun I was having being with my girlfriends, over at their houses, walking the mall, or just sitting and talking with Mom, there was always this ‘what about Mackie?’ thought that would dim the joy.
*
In the meantime, I had several reasons for joy. First, the doctors said I was making such fantastic progress that they were prepared to do two things that had never been done in less than a year. They were going to prepare the paperwork for my name change, and official records change, and school records change! I would be Larissa Marie Hanson to the entire world!
Plus, I’d get to wear my pretty business suit that we got in New York!
The second thing the doctors did, after a long consultation with Mom and me, is a ‘procedure’. That’s what they kept calling it; never an operation or process or whatever–it was The Procedure. I’d read about this and I thought it was wishful thinking but apparently it was something that the doctors could do, just not very often–although it was different than the fictional variety. The Procedure, too, was something that had never been done in less than a year.
*
All of this is because of three reasons. First, my body seems to be responding beautifully to female hormones, whatever the mix they have me on. I mentioned to them what Tommy Chen had said–careful not to mention him by name–and they said that they were exploring the genetic angle, too, but the results were undeniable. My body seemed to lap up the feminine and reject the masculine, and that was fine with me now.
Second, I guess you could say my mind seems to be responding beautifully, too. They kept testing me and testing me, and everything came up female. I mean, in the way my mind thought and my ‘emotional structures’, whatever they meant by that. One of the big things they talk about is the Real Life Test, the RLT, that all transgendered in the program have to go through. With the exception of Larry at school, they said I was already quite successful in my RLT for my age. With the exception of my hours at school, I was ‘fully assimilated in the female social role’, as one shrink put it. ‘Just another teen girl’ is the way another put it–I liked that one better! And they said that Larry was–here’s the shrink phrase–‘an artificial construct that didn’t reflect the core personality’. It’s like a happy, bouncy girl who works as a server in an old folks’ home–she’ll be quiet and respectful because it’s the job. But when it’s over, she takes off the uniform, puts on some kicky skirt and heels and heads out to meet her girlfriends. Larry’s kind of the same way …
So they wanted the ‘Larry construct’ to end as soon as possible, and they were delighted that I qualified for early release. Because the third reason they were moving me so fast through the program was that I was at the transitional stage academically, too. I would be going into high school and Mom and I had choices. On one hand, I could go to the high school where the bulk of my classmates went, along with three other junior highs. Or, I could go to a private school, but I didn’t think we had the money for that.
Or we might move to another district. Mom actually favored that; she said the market was good to sell the house, and we’d find an apartment in another school district and she could still commute to her hospital–it might even be closer. She said there was no point building up twenty more years of equity in a house she never really cared for but had stayed in after the divorce. I’d be out of high school in three years, and what if I went away to college? Plus, we’d had so much fun traveling together that she said we should do more; even travel internationally once I had my female documents. So there were all sorts of good reasons to give up the house and move. My only stipulation is that I didn’t want to be too far away from Celia and Molly. I knew I’d make new friends–girls that only knew me as ‘just another teen girl’, but those two were very special to me. Mom said that would be a factor in our choices, and who knew–maybe our schools would be rivals and we could go to the same games.
*
The doctors’ plan, therefore, was new documentation and The Procedure. There was a slight recovery time after The Procedure and that was no problem; due to my early release, all my friends were still in school for a few weeks. The docs laughed and said they only meant about 24 hours before I felt alright. So we did …(drumroll) The Procedure (cymbal smash)
First I got naked under a paper gown, having no problem being naked in front of a female doctor. She hooked up a ‘butterfly IV’, and I climbed up into a stirrup chair (my first!)–and then she left me. Things got …swirly. The doctor came back in and my pubic hair was completely removed with some goo, and then she catheterized me–thank God I was stoned!–and she poked and prodded and gently shoved all of the Larry bits of genitalia into what looked like a vagina. The doctor was joined by another, and they used a surgical glue gun and anatomical wizardry to make it so I could pee like a girl. I’d already been sitting down to pee for most of a year; it just made more sense that way. Now I had to sit but I didn’t mind. If I could have ever had an erection, The Procedure could be a problem, but I never had and now with the chemicals in me I couldn’t, anyway. Good thing, I thought.
The results would be checked every time I went to the doctors; blood, urine, and spread ‘em. From time to time they’d undo things and evaluate and I already know they won’t be able to ‘re-Procedure’ me fast enough! With the exception of the occasional undoing, I literally don’t have to think of my penis at all, and that suits me just fine. Well, and there’s the tiny fact that it’s not functional–I don’t mean in a sexual way, but there’s a big part of me that would gladly have periods, because it would mean I was a total girl. But I was pretty darned close, now!
Actually, this was like a test flight for ‘The Operation’ that I couldn’t get until I was eighteen. They’d told me that sometimes people went right to the moment of surgery and pulled back, afraid. But with The Procedure, I could see what having a vagina was like and emotionally how I felt about life with no penis, and I could already tell them it was just fine with me! I also knew that I wouldn’t pull back before surgery. When they were done and I looked down and saw my smooth, hairless mound and gingerly felt around down there, I cried for happiness. I really bawled as I was saying ‘thank you, thank you’ over and over.
*
Now, of course, not only do my panties fit perfectly–oh, and I can wear bikinis!–but most importantly I don’t have the worry of discovery. That’s not a problem on a day-to-day basis with the average girl; I mean, how many girls have the chance of somebody ‘discovering’ their vagina during the course of a day? Besides other girls at a slumber party or in the high school showers, I mean. And I can take showers with other girls, like at the rec center pool or high school, because I am now ‘anatomically indistinguishable from a genetic girl’, as one doctor said. So that was a tremendous load off my mind.
But there was that Mackie-fear, always there, that he’d jump out of the bushes, throw me down and rip my clothes off to prove that I was a boy. I knew in my heart that if Mackie ripped off my panties and found a penis, his first instinct would be rage, followed by smashing and cutting, probably. Really bad news. But now with what totally looks like a vagina, he’d realize, yeah, she is a girl. Of course, then he’d probably try to rape me, which wouldn’t work because I had no depth. More bad news.
*
The main thing is that I feel much better around my girlfriends. I was no longer at school, but we couldn’t really do anything as girlfriends there, anyway. We still got together but there was a big difference–now I could go to ‘our’ mall with them, as Rissa. There was no longer any problem with encountering a kid from school who’d say, ‘aren’t you Larry?’ because I wasn’t in school anymore, and Mom and I had decided to move to another district so I wouldn’t have those kids to worry about. And finally, even if the kids knew Larry, I didn’t look like Larry. So now my girlies and I were just like every other group of giggly girls.
When we ran into girls from school, I was introduced as Rissa, a girl who would be going to Madison. That was my new high school–our junior high dumped into Crestview High–so that was enough to satisfy the girls that I wasn’t local. Madison is the most likely candidate for my new school, but there are one or two other possibilities but they get farther and farther away. Plus, Madison has a reputation as pretty strict and a good college prep school, and I still want to go into medicine.
*
One of the groups of girls that Celia knew invited us to a pool party at one girl’s house. She was pretty snobby and had money, and Celia said it was a mark of how ‘cool’ we were that we got invited. So it was the scary time of buying a bikini–why are they always fluorescent lights in the stores that make you look like a drowning victim?–and choosing outfits to blend into the more-moneyed crowd.
Two things happened at the pool party. Three, if you count that I absolutely, totally passed as a real girl in a tiny bikini among kids I know and kids I don’t know. The two things both started with the letter M.
First was Mark Brashear. Omigod! I thought he looked good that day in the hall–and in my dreams–but to see him bare-chested in a swimsuit! Celia leaned over and told me to breathe! It’s still all too weird for me, but he talked to me and had no idea about Larry. I was stupid and mumbled and kept my head down, and I learned that it was Mark that made me do that, not boys. Because several boys ‘chatted me up’ and I flirted and was funny and it was all so natural. I know that nothing can truly happen with Mark Brashear because at some point he would find out about Larry and I know guys; we could convince Rick that I’d always been a girl but that was because he wasn’t my boyfriend. A boyfriend, finding out that his girlfriend had been a boy? Absolutely no way.
Deep heavy sighs. Heavy, heavy dreams! But I’ll always love Mark because, even though he didn’t know it, he was responsible for my discovery that I’m a healthy heterosexual girl.
*
The other M was, of course, Mackie. But in a good way, as if anything with Mackie could be good. Well, bad for Mackie but good for me. Some of the cute boys I was talking with at the pool party were buzzing with ‘hey, did you hear about Mackie?’ and of course I pretended I didn’t know him but wanted to hear.
It was plain from their tone that they didn’t like the guy and were gleefully telling about his downfall. When Mackie had crashed the dance with his new gang, the chaperones held him off for a time. One of them was Mr. Tupperman, the same teacher that ran the study hall the day Molly and I manipulated Rick. Anyway, Mackie got caught that night of the dance because the cops knew the school layout. Mackie got months in Juvie.
Now, some kids get ‘scared straight’ by a time in Juvie, but some get meaner and meaner. Mackie was in that second group. I said he was intelligent but he wasn’t smart. He nursed revenge on Tupperman, blaming him for getting busted. Mr. Tupperman hadn’t done or said anything other than his duties as chaperone, but it was a face and name Mackie knew–he didn’t know the woman teacher that was the other chaperone–and so Mackie fixated on Tupperman.
Intelligent but not smart …two days after Mackie got out of Juvie, he trashed Tupperman’s car in front of his house. Just wailed on it with a baseball bat. But it wasn’t Tupperman’s car; his car was parked on the street. The trashed car belonged to a friend of his that walks with a cane; Tupperman had been thoughtful by parking his own car on the street so the guy could use the driveway and wouldn’t have to walk so far. It was a nice quiet dinner with Tupperman and his wife, his friend and wife, until the car alarm went off along with the smashing sounds.
Tupperman ran out to find Mackie bashing away; screaming ensued and Tupperman made the mistake of accidentally laughing when he said, ‘It’s not even my car!’ and pointed to his at the curb. Mackie was waving the bat around menacingly and when the first sirens sounded, Mackie demanded Tupperman’s keys. He gave Mackie the keys and Mackie still swung the bat at him, missing his head but fracturing Tupperman’s collarbone. Then Mackie used the keys to steal Tupperman’s car, led the police on a chase into town, sideswiped two cars, hit a bus bench and newspaper rack and finally ran a red light, got clipped by a car in the intersection and careened into the hobby shop.
Poor Tupperman, starting his summer with a broken collarbone and no car, but it could have been worse. If Mackie’s bat had connected with his head …
So Mackie went from a Juvenile offender that tried to crash a prom–teen movie stuff–to a hard-core badass. In no particular order, they had him on assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft auto, vandalism, reckless driving, and running a red light. Plus a lot of civil actions against him–even the bus company wanted him to pay for their bench. Mackie was going to be in jail for years, starting in the maximum juvenile facility and then moving him to the adult prison when he turned eighteen to serve out the rest of his sentence.
“That’s if he lives that long,” one boy said, disgusted.
*
So Mackie is no longer on my mind, other than thinking back about how stupid was I?
*
Got my grades; they amazed me and shocked me. I got two A’s (I’d only gotten one in three years of junior high school before), three A minuses (absolutely delighted), and a B+. That was the shock–it was from Mrs. McKenzie! I couldn’t resist it; I emailed her asking, politely, what I could have done to improve the grade. I had to remember to sign it as ‘Larry’.
She emailed back that everything was A level except for one thing …my diary/journal! She said it was too sparse; I didn’t describe things that happened to me emotionally, only in vague terms. I never mentioned anybody by name other than Mom and it was just too brief. She said the other kids averaged twenty pages or so; one girl had actually written over thirty pages. Plus, she had hoped for the June entry, even though I was out of school already.
She was obviously home or at her office but right in front of her computer so we could have a quick exchange of emails. I had a very risky idea. I wrote back asking if a late submission would be considered and have a chance of altering my grade. She said she’d give me twenty-four hours and could change the grade within thirty-six hours, but not after that. I immediately sent one back saying that I had kept a separate diary/journal, parallel to the one I turned in to her. However, it contained foul language, sexual situations, and described criminal activity. She wrote back (laughing, I’d bet) that it sounded no different than some of the movies at the multiplex. Finally, I wrote back that it would be for her eyes only and to please delete it completely after grading. I was getting obsessive about having only A grades. And I think I wanted somebody outside my Mom and friends to know. I told Mrs. McKenzie that I would welcome any and all comments.
I don’t know if she believed that I’d truly written it or thought I’d try to bash something out in twenty-three hours, but I ended it at the line ‘how stupid was I?’, bundled the thing up as a PDF and sent it to her in five minutes.
*
Very, very nervous …
*
Three days later I got two emails. One was a very long one from Mrs. McKenzie. It floored me. She said she’d suspected that something was happening; she said she wasn’t blind. As long as it was for the better, she never commented. Now she said she was so happy for me and my mother and fully understood not only what was happening to me but also why I’d been so brief in the diary I turned in. She said together they made even more sense than apart, because she could see the difference between what ‘society’ saw (my original diary) and the inner turmoil I was actually experiencing. She said there was also a fascinating change in the writing, in both journals, in style and word choice. Quite simply, she said the September entries were written in a masculine mindset, and then became progressively more feminine; by the May entries there was no doubt that a girl had written them. She urged that I consider working it over and releasing it to transgender support organizations, and to certainly share it with the doctors. Finally, she wished Rissa all the luck in the world.
The second email was a short one from the school district. My English grade had been amended from a B+ to a full A.
I thought I’d do a follow-up to my diary/journal because so much happened. This is for me, not for any teacher. I did learn that from Mrs. McKenzie, that these things are valuable to look at where we were and where we are.
*
Mom and I moved to a wonderful apartment in an older building, facing into a courtyard with a swimming pool–I have a pool! There are hanging plants all around and it’s green and lush and quiet and since it’s an older building the rooms are larger than some newer apartments we saw.
My room is definitely a girl’s room now, with a vanity and girl clothes everywhere. Before we moved we bundled up all of Larry’s clothes and gave them to the Goodwill. We watch sales and get a little here and there, and my girlfriends had a party and brought things that didn’t fit them or they had two of, and it was so thoughtful of them and added a lot to my wardrobe in a hurry.
We’re right around the corner from a bus stop on a line that connects really close to my old school; Celia and Molly have come over from time to time so that’s okay. Molly’s come over more and we’ve walked about six blocks to Tommy’s apartment. He is a hoot but a great guy. Also a great guy is his boyfriend Denny, that I mentioned owns the cool salon? As a special present–and I think due to demands from Tommy–Denny treated me to an incredible session at his salon. I got the works–a mani-pedi, eyebrows plucked and shaped, a facial, and a very chic, very feminine hairstyle from Denny himself. This was all the week after I got out of school and the first major public appearance since The Procedure.
*
Speaking of which, it’s been incredible. I don’t even think about it anymore; I’m just a girl if anybody looks at me. And a lot of boys look at me, too, which makes me feel great. I asked myself, what if I was a plain girl, would I be as happy? I think the truthful answer is a qualified yes. Yes, I would be happy that I wasn’t pseudo-juvenile delinquent Larry, but let’s face facts: It’s more fun being a cute girl!
My girlfriends and I go to the mall, the rec center pool, the park, and twice to the beach and, yes, we’ve flirted with boys. The beach parties were great, and there was a cute boy from the Catholic school that I met at the first one and by the second party, we kind of paired off. So as the bonfire died down, I got my first kiss from a boy, and I loved it and felt absolutely certain that I was who I was supposed to be. It’s even more certain with my girlfriends; I’m not sure if they even remember that I was Larry at one time. It’s all so natural and fun and so much better than before.
*
Which leads me to the one major question in my life: Did Mom do this to me?
I couldn’t blame her if she did; Lord knows I was headed for trouble and was already halfway there. So if she decided that I’d be better as a girl, I can’t blame her and she was right. The only thing wrong is that it was done without my knowledge, but when I thought about it, I could understand that, too, because it was done out of love.
Mom and I got close to discussing it several times before all the planets were aligned, the stars in their places, and the cows pointing in the same direction. It was the night that I came back from the second beach party and my first kiss. I was on cloud nine and told Mom all about it; I think it’s very important that we share everything on this journey. Later, once we’re all bored with it, we won’t be talking everything out, but a former-boy-now-a-girl’s first kiss? Very important to discuss!
*
So after our mega-talk, the answer is, yeah, she did it, but no, she didn’t. I have to agree with her that a year ago, I was a mess and getting messier. She was at her wit’s end, and had been going to counseling to help her deal with me; she felt that she was a failure as a mother, as well as a failure as a wife. It was a women’s group that helped her, giving her strength to continue dealing with me. I had no idea she’d been going to the meetings, but she definitely had her hands full with me and needed all the help and support she could get. After one of the meetings, a woman came up to Mom in the parking lot and said she might have another way of helping us; a method that had worked for several families. She said that most teen boys, like the Larry Mom had described to the group, had raging hormones and were like always itchy for action. They usually listened to loud, fast, hard rock and things like speed metal, which had violent lyrics and treated women as sex objects. The violence was glorified by the bands, and the boys got sped up by the excitement and their own chemistry and before you knew it you had a juvenile delinquent. Mom had nodded in agreement; the woman had described Larry to a ‘T’.
She’d told Mom that the method involved an herbal vitamin supplement that had a calming effect, like a tranquilizer but not habit-forming and non-drowsy. It combined with subliminal relaxation tapes or CDs, and with new software, any CD could be duplicated with the relaxation part. That, of course, was the fuzzy sound I’d heard on the CDs but had gotten used to. The lady had told Mom that most of the aggressive boys listened to aggressive music; the purpose of the CDs was not to tell them to change their musical tastes, but to allow them to reconsider the lyrics and in most cases they didn’t enjoy the music as much and started seeking out mellower music. The urge towards delinquency could be cured by the very music that seemed to encourage it!
*
Ms. Belasco was completely unrelated to this underground-group woman; as I’d mentioned, the school district required me to see a therapist for rage and other issues after the incident with Celia, and Ms. Belasco was highly qualified and more than fit the bill. Mom did find her through the above-ground women’s therapy group, so Ms. Belasco believed in supporting women, but she didn’t have any agenda to change me. Her method was to relax me by hypnosis so I would basically tell the truth about my feelings. The hypnosis eliminated my censor, Mom explained. I wasn’t saying anything to impress, I wasn’t suppressing anything; I just flowed with answers to her questions. Then I’d be nudged into figuring things out myself.
Mom said Ms. Belasco was astounded as the sessions revealed this girl inside the boy that was laying on the couch. Ms. Belasco allowed ‘her’ to express her feelings. So for months, while I was still–seemingly–Larry 24/7, I was allowed free rein to explore my thoughts and feelings as a girl while I was on Ms. Belasco’s couch. My mind wasn’t chained to that censor, afraid to express things because of fear of ‘what people might think’, and very quickly I learned that it was perfectly okay to express myself and think and feel like a girl. From things I said in the sessions, it was discovered that my female mind was always there, always processing, but in the background. Like a computer subroutine or something, unnoticed. This is one reason why Larissa was so ‘normal’ so quickly after ‘coming out’, because part of my mind was already allowed to function as feminine, under Larry’s radar, so to speak. Weird, huh?
*
What Mom didn’t know, and Tommy kind of figured out, was that the lady in the women’s group parking lot wasn’t telling Mom everything. She had An Agenda, and that was to feminize males; due to whatever happened in her past, she hated and feared all males and wanted to rid the world of them. The vitamins were absolutely packed with androgen blockers and testosterone inhibitors and estrogen and progesterone! And besides all the physical, emotional, and mental effects, they would act as a tranquilizer–by totally suppressing male hormones–and so they seemed like they were acting as the lady had promised. So I’d be mellow, as advertised, but in the background my body was quietly becoming seriously feminized.
The woman’s pitch was friendly and seemingly completely innocent–just relaxation, to keep the boy out of trouble, with maybe a little homework motivation, hmm?–and she didn’t force Mom to try it on me, telling Mom that she should exhaust all the usual methods first. Finally Mom turned to her after I got suspended in September for threatening Celia. Again, I’d have to say that it really was dangerous territory I was entering, and Mom was entirely justified in trying to save me from myself. She thought she was relaxing me and motivating me towards better grades.
The woman didn’t give any hint that she was not part of the parents’ group; she’d been at some of the meetings but not others. Mom had assumed that she was just a helpful member of the group, and that the woman’s method was all above-board. She was particularly swayed by the matter of the CDs–the woman had chuckled that no boy was going to sit down and listen to a motivational CD when he could listen to his favorite rock groups instead. So the relaxation ‘fuzziness’ could be applied to any CD; that way the boy would be sure to listen. Mom said the woman even appeared embarrassed that it was, sort of, bootlegging. It was just that bootleg-embarrassment that reassure Mom that the woman was just a regular concerned mother, and was telling the truth. And Mom offset any bootleg-guilt by actually buying the real CD and turned it over to the lady to be processed, so in Mom’s mind it was all perfectly legal now.
Everything about what the woman said made sense to Mom. I’d be healthier with the vitamin supplements–the woman had given her a list of ingredients, all of them well-known and perfectly benign, but with the active ingredients unlisted, of course–and relaxed and motivated and then with the hypnosis sessions, I might be able to get to the core of my unhappiness. So Mom began adding the supplement to my morning juice, just like people add protein powder or those supplements at Jamba Juice or Orange Julius. And she bought the fresh CDs and received the doctored ones, and figured I’d work things out in my sessions with Ms. Belasco.
My mother never planned to feminize me.
Tommy was right, though; I’d been on massive female hormones since mid-September, which explained how my body feminized so quickly. Once we’d found out about this and had the things analyzed, Tommy said there was probably enough in the pills to, as he put it, “Turn Brad into Angelina”.
The CDs were similar. Yes, they did the music-genre-switching thing, and my grades slowly came up, so the motivational part appeared to be working. But they also had powerful subliminal messages, reinforcing femininity, planting images and encouraging feminine dreams. So the first effect was that when the innocent Ms. Belasco would induce hypnosis, I was already encouraged by the CDs to relax into femininity. Each side of my ‘therapy’, the CDs and the hypnosis, reinforced the other, round and round, and it just continued strengthening my feminine persona. And when the shrinks started testing me, I scored totally in the feminine end of things, because I’d had nearly six months of ‘programming’ to think, emote, and respond as a female.
So the underground lady’s stuff really, really worked to ‘rid the world of another male’.
Mom was absolutely mortified; humiliated and in tears when she discovered how badly we’d been manipulated. I think it was hard on her because she considered herself an intelligent woman–as well as a medical professional–but I calmed her down when I said it was like hypnosis with Ms. Belasco. You think, it can’t work on me, and the next thing you know you’re under. Good con artists are good because they don’t seem to be con artists. Mom prides herself on her medical expertise and was angry with herself for not getting the things independently tested, but I pointed out that the woman’s pitch was fine-tuned and pitch-perfect; friendly and disarming and harmless, only intending goodness. And it actually made sense; when people decide to start getting healthier, they often start with herbals and shake supplements. They might pop a motivational CD in their car’s stereo for the ride to work. It’s part of the culture now, and the underground woman’s group counted on the normalcy of it all.
We found out about the lady in late July, because she hit the news. She’d given the treatment to another family and the boy was so emotionally distraught at the feminine thoughts that were flooding him that he attempted suicide. It all came out in the investigation and the lady was arrested later that fall.
*
I told Mom that there was another reason she shouldn’t be so hard on herself, and that was because of the boy’s suicide attempt. He was a normal guy; yeah, aggressive and obnoxious and a bully, but a 100% ‘normal’ male. Like another Mackie or Steve. Flooded with the herbal vitamins and the subliminal CDs, his body softened a bit and it was hard to get the girly thoughts out of his brain, but he was still 100% male at bedrock. It was the disconnect that made him want to die. So the treatment wasn’t 100% effective. It didn’t work with the boy because he was a boy to begin with.
What Ms. Belasco discovered very quickly with me was that I wasn’t …
I truly believe, now that everything’s in the open and after everything that’s happened, that I was a girl to begin with, and not much of a boy externally. The treatment didn’t make me become a girl; it allowed me to become a girl–actually, it allowed me to become the girl I already was inside, buried deep.
We always hear about transgendered people that knew since birth, or the cliché of ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ and someone might ask how I could truly be transgendered and not know it. Or at least not give any indications, but I remember Celia’s mom speculating that my roughness was ‘overcompensating’. That could have been an indication that something was going on within me, buried deep, as I said.
Finally I came up with an analogy to explain how I might seem to be a boy named Larry last year and a girl named Larissa this year. Imagine looking out across a canyon and all you see are rocks. Then somebody hands you a telescope, and you look at the same canyon but now you can see an eagle perched on a rock. The telescope didn’t make you see an eagle and it didn’t make the eagle appear by magic. The eagle was always there, but you couldn’t see it. So this underground treatment was the telescope that allowed me to see the eagle in the rocky canyon of my unhappy boyhood …to be overly-poetic.
Mom relaxed after that. We told the doctors and they kind of shrugged; they’d figured it out after the lady got busted. The supplement I’d been taking had been analyzed and discontinued but they adjusted my medication to adjust. There was some embarrassment on their part about how they’d been so pleased with me that they’d fast-tracked things, but one doctor said it was like healing a broken leg–whether it was because of a fall downstairs or a car accident was incidental to the fact that the femur was fractured and needed to be set. I guess this is my time for analogies.
There was also the factor–unconnected to anything the underground women’s group could have done–that my system was my system, in terms of how I metabolized things (I certainly remember my Raging Hormones week!) and the doctors learned from that, even while they helped me. They said that they had the information they needed, and as to the woman’s influence, they felt that it didn’t cause a process within me as much as it accelerated a process already at work. Ultimately, like the broken leg analogy, at this point it really didn’t matter how I ‘became female’; the fact that I was, demonstrably and undeniably, female now and would remain female forever was the important matter.
*
And female I am and will be. I’m happier than I ever was, but it’s not happiness from CDs and pills. It’s happiness from my own achievements. Maybe a side-effect of the CDs and pills was that I was able to buckle down and achieve things, but the end result is a happy, productive person who has a bright future. And that happy person is a girl. I love being a girl, Mom loves having a daughter, I got fantastic grades and I know high school will be hard but I’m prepared to work hard and get into medical college. I’ve been so fortunate in discovering my own truth and I want to help others. I want to give back to the world instead of taking from the world. I want to make a positive difference.
I am Rissa!
The End