Smokin in the Boy's Room

When I was in Junior High, there was this boy, Joey Melancon. He was beautiful. 70’s aesthetic – that perfect longish mop of dry, almost frizzy hair; his torso 70’s skinny, the kind of lean and burgeoning 14 year old boy muscularity that always, in my mind anyway, conjures the letters “NAMBLA."

His girlfriend was this stunning redhead. I mean breath-catchingly stunning, at least to me, who, had there been that option in 1974, would’ve worn an oversized black sweater and black raver pants so I could swim in contented isolation in the shadow of my own insecurity.

By 1975, a mere two seasons later, Joey was a different boy. He had begun to pursue me, ask me out, which was thrilling – you have no idea the fantasy life I had conjured for both him and her, and I can tell you plainly I wasn’t featured anywhere in that – but here’s the thing: he just wasn’t as beautiful.

His face, 6 months later, had thickened. Those epicene, Grecian features were no more. He looked almost horsey, his facial bones having elongated in the hormonal tumult, his brow protruding. Of course I went out with him; I could find traces of my Joey in that quixotic visage and I was too delighted to have been asked out at all by someone I had perceived as popular, with whom I had spun an albeit fragile architecture of romance around, to say “no thanks, you look like a horse and you’re not actually as interesting in person.” *

I hate my hair and my skin is coarsening.

Like it or not, and I do not, I have entered That Awkward Land of Puberty. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve lost some weight or because, seriously, my skin texture is changing – it was so lady-soft and delicious, one of my best features – but I’m starting to get forehead lines and jowls. Now, the adolescent critic is nuanced and flaw-seeking; he pores over each detail with a nasty magnifying glass and a clever collection of cruel observations. I cannot escape this wanton abuse because it’s from me; the best I can do is pay it no heed.

I just feel ugly. Between boy and man ugly. I’ve got pimples for crying out loud. I had this thing, this look, as a lesbian; it was cute and girls liked it. Now I feel like my hair sucks – it’s unbecomingly short, but it is more “male;” my torso is muscling but my legs and hips are still a jiggly paean to the glories of the full-figured female; I’ve got a penchant for straight chicks I NEVER had before, even though that’s often whom I’ve attracted and I suspect heterosexual women find this awkward boy-woman-man (bowoman!) unappealing or even creepy, which speaks more to my newly detonated adolescent insecurity than my actual real-time appearance.

I shall not be attending the sock-hop, thank you very much. You can’t make me. I’ll be smoking cigarettes behind the gym.

I’m not a pretty boy. The application of aesthetic is different for men, I have to remember that. I noticed, on my transguy friends, that their skin is more lined than mine, and they look thicker and rougher. Like guys. That’s part of what happens. It’s mortifying that my nose feels like it’s growing proportionate to, erm, other changes, but that’s what I get for wanting to be a man, right? At some point I can stick a moustache under there to balance that shit out, right? I’ve always loved large noses, especially on men, so what’s the big deal?

Joey wasn’t beautiful anymore. I wonder if he grew into his masculine, adult beauty. I imagine he did. I have got to drop all these ideas about what I’m going to look like. Everyone tells you up front, when you begin testosterone therapy: you don’t get to pick and choose the effects! You’re not going to love everything that happens to you!

Of course, when you hear that, true to your impending adolescence, you think “you’re stupid and old and you don’t know anything.” Or something like that. I’d read the stories, of hair sprouting in unexpected, unimaginable almost, places, hair receding alarmingly in others, smells and oils and feelings and discomforts, but I don’t think anyone ever said “you may not be pretty anymore.”

Alas, I’m no longer a lass. I’m going to have to amp up the self-confidence. Chicks dig a confident man, and a funny, secure dude can sometimes find ingress where a handsome or pretty lad cannot. And it is, after all, all about the ladies. That seems to be writ in stone, and no amount of skin-sloughing oatmeal scrub shall blast it away. So wish me luck, and if you see me, please take pity. I'm Quasimodo just now, gimping around the bell-tower; Cyrano De Bergerac, watching the cool young dudes dance with his lady to his own tunes - aw HELL NO. I've got the adolescent's disproportionate egocentricity too - I forgot. I'll just charm the pants offa ya.

*he was very sweet and still gorgeous but adolescence is the HARSHEST CRITIC.

Greasy and Few Are the Moments We Two Can Share

I neither fully comprehend what I'm doing, nor understand why I’m compelled to do it. At the end of the day I ask myself "Do you want to take testosterone?" and the answer is (nearly) always "yes." Sometimes that answer is only superficially about being a "man." I’m not sure I want to be a “man.” Whatever that is.

I don’t know what I am anymore.

I feel like transition really is that: this place of movement, evolution. How can I know where evolution will take me? Will I have the same amount of arms, even? Maybe I’ll be a spider!

I feel like I just don’t get to know – like it’s totally in some greater Consciousness’ hands. This is so humbling. You have this sense of being your own architect – this may explain why people get so entangled in plastic surgeries – that you can somehow manufacture this creature you dream for yourself. But when you’re doing it with chemistry, with hormones, there’s no telling what will happen! Who can predict how it will affect the body, much less the mind!? My brain already feels both more stripped down, and more souped-up. I’ve never been more horned up yet less inclined to date someone, although that may have more to do with having charred oneself radically on a flaming pile of love in recent memory. I’ve never had more confidence, felt more integrated, yet conversely felt so pixeled and insecure.

Let me remind you about adolescence. Remember adolescence? Remember your skin and hair being too oily, your body too large in some places, too small in critical others? Travel back with me to that place of stunning self-absorption, not a pleasurable narcissism, but the neurotic’s microscopic examination of every flawed detail, literally every outlandish and outsized pore and whatever’s impacted in it; consider the social steam-cooking, your acutely felt knowledge that you do not fit in, never will; you are a leering, disgusting, oversexed, and be-zitted social spectacle whom assuredly everyone sees highlighted against the backdrop of its own constant and slumping failure, who stinks and sweats and stutters and forgets everything it has ever known or been in this new, this horrid, this tragic incarnation.

It’s not that bad. But it was, and the present holds a heat, an ember of that time. I do feel a bit like Seth Brundel in the final quarter of The Fly. The testosterone has taken me, like an ill-intentioned hypnotist, to places where, if the mind is hazy, the body recalls all too well. I have a fear of public speaking I haven’t experienced since High School, when I was convinced I was there solely for the nasty and brutish entertainments of the popular. This phenomenon is almost completely corporal, a physical response. As an actual real-time adult, I can walk through that mental-ated gauntlet, force myself to commit to speaking aloud in public, but it is highly unpleasant - please note that I am a performer and I am now terrified to perform.

I smell. There, I said it. I smell different and I smell bad. I am beginning to smell like a guy. EVERYWHERE. I take comfort, refuge even, in my fantasy that whoever falls in love with me will love my smell. It has to be that way, right?! I am terrified of losing my hair prematurely, meaning, before the rest of me looks like a dude. Please God, let me get facial hair before I lose head hair!

Some guys were telling me how the way they looked at women changed. That they had heretofore seen women as sexy and hot, but hadn’t actually wanted to rub their greasy horny eyeballs up and down’em and drown in the jiggly fuck parts, which they now found themselves doing. I think I may look at women less, actually. I think I gave myself carte-blanche, as a dyke, to check women out. I find myself trying to be respectful. I look, I’m a lookie-lookerson, but I’m too self-conscious (a-do-le-scence! Give me an “A!”) and therefore cannot enjoy it. I’m totally experiencing the joyless shame of puberty! Good times!

Also, men are broody. Women are moody; men are broody. I’ve got a minor brood thing that wants to happen. It used to look like female depression, but now it’s like dark, moody guy. I hang out with men a lot now, deliberately, and I can tell you: they have a depression that’s tonally unique to men. Women are dark chocolate; men are bitter. We’re 85% cacao depression. Women often find this darkness sexy and compelling, which means it's culturally marketable so many men don't feel it's a liability . It’s a suck-ass place to be – I can’t articulate this exactly but it’s the place where men feel their victimhood. I wish I could say more about it but it may mean visiting that place and IT’S AWFUL.

I’m told that when women break up with men, it’s done. They’re good that way. Men, on the other hand, as the joke goes, will call late at night and say things like “You stupid bitch I hate you! Come back, Baby, please (sounds of sobbing)!” I fear I may be that guy. That’s mortifying, but possibly true. I’ll leave a little room for doubt so you don’t think I’m a total loser. And right now, what you think of me is painfully important.

That, Ladles and Gentlespoons, is the worst of all of puberty’s great charms and allure: the delusion that others’ opinions of me define me. It is taking all the strong will of this grownup to wrest the wheel from the boy who is determined to drive into the cafeteria assessments of his “peers.” Once in a while, the boy wins, and there we are, the two of us, covered in Shepard’s Pie (it’s Friday’s lunch!) and overcooked peas. As we sit, in our parents’ now smoking and battered Toyota Corolla, bloodied and benzoil-peroxided, amidst the screaming chaos of wounded high-school cliques and claques, we panic: “Are they laughing at my hair?”

Well, ARE THEY?