Tabby

I can feel that it’s going to be another one of those days. I stare at the ceiling contemplating whether I even have the energy to get out of bed. The thought of obligatory social interaction on a day like today makes every fiber of my being want to crawl back under the sheets and hide from everyone. The thought of having to face the world like this... With a satisfyingly exaggerated grunt, I use my arms for momentum and pull my reluctant body into a sitting position. I rub the crust out of my tired eyes, finding remnants of yesterday’s mascara on my fingers. I no longer want the long lashes or the rosy cheeks I so desired yesterday morning. My phone buzzes on my bedside table and I fumble to pick it up, trying to focus on the screen with slightly blurry vision. It’s a text from Derrick.

Good morning baby girl! Are you awake?

My stomach twinges slightly. I’m hit with a pang of anger, among other things- guilt is there too-- sadness, self loathing, and something else that I haven’t yet been able to identify. I don’t have the right to be mad at him. He loves me. And I… love him.

Yep, there’s the guilt really coming through. What is wrong with me? Most girls would kill to get this kind of attention- most girls. But I don’t want to be a girl. At least not today. I think about the softness of my chest, the curve of my waist, my long hair and am overwhelmed with an inexplicable feeling of anxiety and dread. With a sigh, I robotically text back

Yes, I’m awake! Good morning, babe!

I throw in a couple of hearts and kissy faces for good measure. He’s going to want to see me today. If I tell him I’m sick he’s going to insist on coming over even if he’s putting himself at risk for catching whatever illness I have. God, he’s so sweet. He cares so much about me. Why does he care so much about me? I could say I have other plans or a family obligation, but I just can’t bring myself to lie to him. Though haven’t I already lied to him? And here’s guilt coming in for another round; the ol’ double whammy, folks. I’m such a coward. I should have told him a long time ago. Denial is strong, I hadn’t even come to accept it myself until three months ago when I spent two hours down the rabbit hole of the internet and discovered that I wasn’t completely alone in feeling this way. I’ve had these feelings my whole life, but only with this intensity for about a year. And it has been getting increasingly worse. And now that I’m in a relationship…I can’t just change on a day’s notice. Derrick likes girls. He likes my long hair, he likes my feminine form, he likes when I wear dresses, though he tells me I’m beautiful no matter what I wear. What a sweetheart. I don’t want to upset him in any way, but at the same time I know he would want me to be happy. Right? I need to tell him. I have to tell him. These feelings aren’t going to go away; they only get stronger the further I push them down. Yes, today I will tell him. I pull on one his hoodies that I stole- I love having someone that I can borrow masculine clothes from- plus bonus- it smells good, and I wrap my hair in a tight bun (this is what I do when I like to forget that it’s there). I haven’t had the guts to chop my hair off. Maybe I will after I tell Derrick. My stomach twists at the thought of his reaction. Will he be mad? Sad? Confused? Will he even believe me? Will he tell me its a phase like my mom did when I tried to share these very feelings with her? Will he tell me I’m just an attention w***e like my best friend did when I tried to confide in her? I take a breath and send him a text with shaky hands.

Hey can you come over? There’s something I have to talk to you about.

Jacob

Daddy is yelling again. The walls make the words go away, but not the noise. He’s yelling about me. I can hear my name. It’s like my ears are made special to hear “Jacob.” Or Jake. Mommy mostly calls me Jake, even when she’s mad. Daddy mostly calls me Jacob, but sometimes he calls me f****t. Like when he’s mad. It’s not a nice word. I got in trouble when I called Amy Jones a f****t when she stole my orange marker and I couldn’t color my tiger right. She told be I could color it red. That made me mad, so I yelled like daddy and Mrs. Lewis heard me and got very angry. I got in trouble when I called Kevin Lamay a booger head and he cried and told on me. Booger head is a mean name. I think f****t is like booger head. I can hear mommy yelling too. She don’t yell as loud as daddy does. It’s like her voice can’t go that big. It gets all cracky like when she cries. Mommy isn’t as scary when she’s mad, sometimes she just leaves for a little bit and when she comes back she says she feels better and she goes to sleep. Mommy sleeps a lot. Sometimes I get in trouble for waking her up. I also get in trouble when I borrow her spotty dress. That’s when daddy yells and calls me f****t. He doesn’t yell at mommy and call her f****t when she wears the spotty dress, he gives mommy lots of kisses. Mommy says that dresses are for girls. I’m not a girl cause I don’t have long hair. I told mommy I could grow my hair and be a girl. She said it don’t work like that. I asked her how it works. She said she’d tell me when I was older. Maybe I’m not old enough to wear spotty dresses. Maybe I need to have boobies like mommy. Maybe I’ll have boobies like mommy when I grow up. I like to wear dresses. I want to wear all kinds of dresses, not just mommy’s spotty dress. That one is itchy and it smells funny. I want to wear pretty dresses like the girls at my school wear. Mariah Gibbs has a real pretty dress with yellow flowers on it. It looks like a garden, like the one Grammy has at her house. The flowers get real tall and I can hide in them. Sometimes I even pretend I’m a flower, all tall and pretty. I don’t get to go to Grammy’s anymore cause she has old timer’s and Daddy said she went crazy. One time I asked Mariah if I could have her dress and she said no. I told her we could trade and she could have my Redskins shirt cause I don’t even like football or the Redskins. Daddy says he’s gonna make me play football this year so I can learn how to be man. Mariah said I could try it on, but she wanted it back. Mrs. Lewis said that friends share and Mariah and me is friends. We switched behind the slide at recess, but Mrs. Lewis saw and we got in big trouble. We tried to tell her we was just switching clothes, but she made us put our own clothes back on and sent a note to Mommy and Daddy. Daddy asked me what I was doing taking a girl’s clothes off and I said we was switching and he said that was the dumbest thing he ever heard and he said some other things that I didn’t know what they meant and he used f****t a lot. He hit me on the face and made my lip feel funny. It felt like when your foot gets all spiky when you sit on it for a long time. Daddy hits when he gets real mad and his breath smells like when Grammy let me help make rolls except icky and kinda sour. Mommy always comes into my room and tells me that Daddy says he’s real sorry and he’s just stressed cause it’s hard to find a job. I tell mommy there’s all kinds of jobs like firefighters and doctors and maybe Daddy could be one of them and she shakes her head and says it ain’t that easy. Mommy works at Mcdonald’s. I think she cooks the food there. Mrs. Lewis says that someone who cooks food is a chef. Maybe I’ll be a chef like Mommy when I grow up. I’ll be a chef and wear dresses cause you can do what you want when you’re a grownup.

Stella

Don’t get me wrong here. It’s not that I haven’t lived. I’ve had 79 years of fun (not all of it necessarily legal, but that’s beside the point). It’s just that it’s all been a lie. Publicly, I’ve lived by the name “Owen” for 79 years. But that is not my name. When I was 22 years old, I began to call myself Stella. Not out loud, except for whispers at night because I liked the way it felt on my tongue, but in my mind and my soul and my heart of hearts. Of course, this was the 1960’s and though it was a time of liberation, it was not my time of liberation. But now is my time. The world has become a much more welcoming and accepting place, it’s really quite remarkable. Never before had I seen women with facial hair that weren’t in a circus, never had I seen people like me have a voice, however soft, in society, never had I heard the word “transgender” worn as a proud title. It is fantastic that our society has become such an inviting place. I’m just a bit disappointed that I’m not going to be around to enjoy it for long. About a month back, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer (Ironic, is it not?) and given two to three years to live. A real bummer (pun intended) but this is all the more reason for me to, as the kids would say today, “come out.” In my day, it wasn’t a closet, it was a vault and there was no coming out. I can’t afford surgery. I can’t afford hormone therapy. Paying for my cancer treatment is already putting enough strain on the ol’ pocketbook (yes, I have a pocketbook). I swear if I had just been born in the body I was supposed to, none of this would even be happening. But life likes to bite you in the ass that way, doesn’t it? Quite literally in my case. I’ll never be able to physically become the person I want to be. It’s just such a long and expensive process and what’s the point of wasting money on a body that’s about to die? No, all I want is to have my name on my tombstone. I want to live out the remainder of my days as raw, uncut Stella and I don’t give a damn what my family says, most of them are dead anyway and soon I’ll be joining them in hell. That’s where they say I’m going. But how bad can it be- I’ll finally be surrounded by people like me. It’ll be like one big, queer reunion down there and I can only hope those holier-than-thou judgers will be right there along with us, having to deal with us for all of eternity. But until then, I’m going to wear whatever I damn well please, I’m going to stuff my bra and strut around town like the lady I was born to be. I’m not afraid anymore. It took 79 years, but I am not afraid. Today I am going to walk into city hall in the heels that I’ve been afraid to wear for so long and I am legally changing my name. Today Stella starts to live.