And then, of course, I saw him.
It was the summer after my sophomore year of college, and Riley dragged me to a local house party. She promised a good time and, to her credit, it wasn't all that bad. I even ran into Jeff Simpson, the bug-eyed, red-haired jerk of history-class fame, without incident. I stood my ground, refusing to feel awkward or meek, and he responded by being almost obnoxiously friendly, eager to hear all about my new school and classes and life in the big city. Perhaps, I thought, I really had at last discarded all my high school baggage. Perhaps it'd never been all that heavy to begin with.
That's when Wolfe entered the house. He looked, frankly, like shit—his eyes sunken and bloodshot, his ponytail sheared, its spiky remains left greasy and matted on his head. Already drunk and high, he moved extremely slowly, seeming about to tip over with each step.
And despite all of this, just looking at him I felt instantly transported back to geometry class, and all I wanted was for him to talk to me, to show up at my house on his skateboard, to teach me the latest track from Cypress Hill.
“Hey, Wolfe,” I almost whispered from my post by the kitchen door.
He turned slowly, took a minute to focus. “Hey. You.”
We stood in silence for a moment, and I racked my brain for small talk. I couldn't let him just walk away so quickly. “I heard you're working at the Wal-Mart photo lab now.”
“Got fired. Stole some film.”
“Oh. Living at home?”
“Where the fuck else?”
And then, for old times' sake, I threw out a question I knew he'd hate, just to hear the predictably obscene response. After all, it wouldn't be geometry class without one.
Me: How's your mom?
Him: Bad. She's got hepatitis C. Real bad.
It wasn't a non sequitur. It was an answer—a real answer. And I was entirely unprepared.
I didn't know much about hepatitis C, but I knew it was the bad one. The chronic one. The incurable one. The terminal one?
The revelation seemed almost comically bizarre, as unintentionally goofy as one of Elm Street's overly elaborate death sentences. The disease sounded too obscure, the lettered name too complicated. Friends' mothers didn't get hepatitis C. They got straightforward terminal illnesses: breast cancer or ovarian tumors, the diseases mothers die of in movies on the Lifetime network. I'd never heard of a mother with hepatitis C. It just didn't sound right.
Maybe it was just an obscene joke, one of Wolfe's inappropriate responses turned up a few notches. Maybe his sense of humor had bounced even farther off the wall in my two years away. I waited for his trademark self-congratulatory snicker. But he didn't look back my way. He didn't smile. And he didn't speak.
Neither did I. I wanted to say so much. I wanted to tell him I was worried, let him know how often I still thought about him up at school. I wanted to offer my help, my support. I wanted to provide simplistic solutions, outline unreasonable plans. He could move to New York, sleep on the floor of my boyfriend's apartment. We'd help him find a job, find a life, a family. He could still go to school; he could still make films. I wanted to tell him that he shouldn't be afraid to cry. I wanted to tell him that I knew how much his mom meant to him, that I knew how hard this must be.
But the truth was, I didn't know how hard it was. I didn't know how Wolfe felt about his mother. Certainly, I'd never discussed their relationship with him. I'd never even seen them together, never even been inside their home. Who was I to tell Wolfe it was okay to cry? Who was I to grant permission? Maybe he'd been crying every night; maybe that's why he looked so awful. I just didn't know. I couldn't possibly know how he felt. I only knew how I wanted him to feel, how the Wolfe I'd imagined and longed for would feel.
I couldn't tell this Wolfe what to do. There were too many questions that needed to come first. And you didn't ask Wolfe questions. I didn't know how to ask Wolfe questions—not real ones. And who was I to ask them, anyway? Some pushy stranger from New York, some kid he used to watch scary movies with?
Instead, I just swallowed and said, “I'm sorry.” Then I stared, willing him to understand how much I meant it.
I wish I could say that for a brief moment Wolfe met my gaze, that he blinked back tears, that a lifetime of conversations passed between us. But that's not the kind of movie Wolfe and I liked to watch together. Ours were simple tales with clear stakes and clearer options: painful death or painful survival. There was no time for meaningful gazes on Elm Street, no room for subtext in the terse dialogue of its nightmares. Scream made it clear that physical love is off-limits to horror movie protagonists—“Sex equals death,” one character earnestly informs his friends—but in truth, emotional intimacy is equally forbidden. Genuine connection, after all, isn't suspenseful. It's isolation that creates tension. That's why any friends our hero makes along the way are inevitably picked off by the villain: He can't be allowed to find solace. Solace doesn't make for a good story. He has to keep running.
Wolfe didn't match my stare. Instead, he cast his red eyes to the floor and muttered, “So you're in New York now. Big successful fucker in New York.”
“Not so big.”
He shrugged and started to walk away.
“Hey, Wolfe,” I yelled. Or, at least, it felt like yelling.
He turned back.
“Did you see the new Freddy movie?”
“Yeah, really sucked, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess it did.” It had. Sucked. Majorly. But it hurt me to admit it somehow, hurt me to say it to him.
He grunted and took a swig of his beer. “They all sucked, probably. We just were too stupid to know it.”
“I don't think so.” I thought of that awful Freddy board game, still gathering dust in my closet at home. I thought of my well-worn Cypress Hill CD, of rocking the mike right, of the special edition di-rector's cut of The Merry-Go-Round of Death. I pictured Hapless Teen #47 writhing on the sticky floor of that roach motel. “No, they didn't all suck. The first ones were really pretty great.”
He opened his mouth as if to argue, and then stopped, his lips curling into what almost looked like a smile. “Yeah, guess they had some pretty good moments.”
Then he turned and ambled slowly toward the circle of smokers in the back.
Trans-ventures of an F2M
by Alexzander Colin Rasmussen
I thrived so much on small displays of affection and love. I spent so much time living in a body that wasn't mine, and hearing my mother, father, and other people in my life tell me that I was useless and nothing, that I wasn't worth being loved or cared for, that I would never amount to anything. This is what I believed and how I felt before I came out as transgender.
I guess it started when I was five. I didn't like girls' clothes, and instead of playing with dolls and playing house, I wanted to play with fighter jets and Tonka trucks. I had this notion that I would eventually grow a penis and that the mistake would be fixed. It was like I had the flu or a cold. With some medicine, rest, and a little tender loving care, this would be cured.
My mom, Katie, was a cocaine addict, and she was searching for love in all the wrong places. She would bring home men who would beat her in front of me and my sisters. I watched my mother literally waste away from the effects of the drug. It was scary. But I was so young that I was oblivious to what was going on.
Along with the addiction came the abuse toward me and my sisters. At school the nurse or my teachers were always questioning me about why I was so thin or why I had bruises. I would not answer because I had been told that no one had the right or business to know what went on at my house. The teachers always told me to go home and soak in the bathtub, put on some clean clothes, and eat more food.
My father was never there. He left when I was really young and faded in and out of my life. He only came to see me when he was drunk because that was the only time he could handle seeing how badly he had screwed me up. I was very scared of him because he beat my mother in front of me.
He was a very violent man and he taught me at a young age that the best way to let people know when you were angry was to break or throw things, or hit people you care about. That was how he got heard. When he didn't feel as though he was in control or that my mom was listening to him, that is what he'd do. I didn't like him even when I was a little kid. But I so badly wanted him in my life so he could play catch with me or show me how to shave.
People from my school found out about how I was living, and my sisters and I were torn away from my mom and everything that I thought was normal, all in a period of fifteen minutes. With nothing but a trash bag with some dirty clothes and a thought in my mind that it would only be a month before I would come back, I got into a red Department of Youth and Family Services car and was taken to live with my family on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
For the first few weeks it was good. This lady from the Department of Social Services came to question me and my sisters about the abuse we were victims of while living with my biological parents. This is when things initially started to careen out of control. I wasn't used to getting hugs and having people care so much about me. The woman asked me all these questions about things that my mom used to do and whether I was sexually abused. I answered all the questions with complete honesty. That was the only time during the next ten years that I would be completely honest about my life.
After the woman was finished asking the questions, I looked over to my aunt and she was crying. She picked me up and held me. She felt so warm and smelled so good that I didn't want to let her go. She got up and carried me into the house and held me while I cried myself to sleep. I didn't want that feeling to go away because then everything would go back to normal. She would pretty much pretend that I wasn't there and that I was just something that she had to deal with.
I longed for that warm smell again on so many occasions but was too afraid to ask. So I went to her with tears running down my cheeks and told her about what had happened to me when I lived with my mother. I got a warm, smell-good hug and felt so good.
I soon noticed that the only time that I would get that love was when I told them something that happened to me when I lived with my mother. So I told them everything, sometimes repeating stories, and over time adding exaggerations to them because the reactions weakened. I would still get hugs, but they got shorter. As a result, I began fabricating stories. They knew I was lying. I hated myself every time I told a new story but the love and affection was so important to me.
My older sister started showing a lot of her problems, and in response my life at home became World War II. I considered school my refuge. It was the only place where I could escape from the sound of my grandmother and sister physically fighting, and the sounds of their screams and cries.
Watching my grandmother pile things in front of the basement door so that my sister could not come out was hard. I could not stand it. I was cutting myself almost every day. To numb my pain, to find the boy inside, to feel pain and know that I was alive and awake rather than in a dream. I questioned the point of my life and attempted suicide for the first time at the age of twelve. I took some clonidine, my sister's medication. It didn't work but I wanted so badly just to fall asleep and never wake up again, to escape these lies I had created and this life that did not really exist.
I wanted it all to disappear. I hated myself, everyone who was around me, and everyone who believed my lies. I hated everything about myself. At the age of eleven, I'd begun throwing up after I ate because my grandmother constantly pressed into my brain that I had to be the intelligent, skinny, strong, and sensible one. She wanted me to be the example that my older sister should learn from. For me, the desire to be perfect soon became a need. It became the reason that I lived, the reason I breathed. How, though, could I be perfect if I had the wrong body? By this age I knew for certain that I was a boy inside. I just did not know how to face it or what to do. I was holding this horrible secret inside me that hurt more each time I got dressed in the morning and went to bed at night. Every time I heard someone call me Heather, I cringed and something didn't feel right inside. Deep down I knew that it wasn't.
In August of 1999 I was admitted to the hospital for the first time, and at the same time as my older sister. I stayed for almost three weeks. When I went home, I was told that my sister would not be returning to live with us. I was devastated. My sister and I had always been close, and even though our relationship crumbled when we left my mom, I loved her and had a bond with her that no one saw from the outside.
I hated everything and myself. I didn't want to live with my grandmother, because the pressure to shine to perfection was too much without my sister around. I wasn't allowed to bring home a school paper unless it had an A on it. I didn't eat anything unless it was salad. I threw up even lettuce and woke up at three in the morning to do sit-ups. I stayed up until early morning completing homework. I threw myself into my books and studies, even making up extravagant assignments to learn something new and have an excuse to be up studying. And if I wasn't studying, I was cleaning my house.
I spent the seven years after I left my mother living my life to make my grandmother and family happy with me. It was never enough, though. I always missed a spot with the vacuum. I could have gotten an A+ and not an A. I should have studied for three hours, not just two and a half. I could not do anything that would make them love me. I cut myself up to sixteen times each day, and wore long-sleeve shirts to cover the cuts.
Again I was admitted to a hospital. I wanted to go, though. It was a chance for me to be sad and have people there who cared enough to ask me what was wrong. It was a chance to get away from being perfect. I had a week or two where I did not have to clean the house or stay up late doing homework. I still threw up and eventually chose not to eat for sometimes up to four or five days. The cycle of hospitalizations continued until 2002. I entered Pembroke Hospital in July, and was there for five months before I entered a residential program on New Year's Eve.
So much happened in those months at the residential that a year and a half passed in what seemed like a day. I went through some very scary times. Just the thought of cutting seemed like a death sentence for me.
I ended up going to a partial hospitalization program after cutting two arteries in my wrist. (I went to the hospital every morning at eight o'clock, and came back to the residential at night.) I had gone into the bathroom hoping that no one would find me until I had died. But when I saw that I had lost control of the bleeding, and that my life was pouring out of my wrist and leg, I prayed that someone, anyone, would find me before I died. I made it through, and life seemed to get better. But one thing was still wrong.
For twelve years I had been eaten up by this terrible secret. I was a boy and I was a girl. I was trapped. I was something that no one else I knew was. I confronted my situation by speaking to a staff person at my program. She told me to pick out a name and just be myself. Often in my life I had thought about names. I went through Adam, Alex, Zack, Trevor, Xavier, and many others. Finally I settled on Alexzander Colin Rasmussen. I talked to my program director. “What would you say if I asked you to call me Alex and use he pronouns?” Her response was that it was not going to happen because she did not call people by nicknames, that I wasn't a boy, and that it would not be allowed because I lived in an all-girls program. Thinking that my attraction to girls could only identify me as a dyke, I identified as just that. I was, in that program, known as “Heather the dyke.”
The need for me to find out what was wrong with me and my body, and why they did not match, grew urgent. I met some friends that I still consider very close, Billy and Kevin. They were both identifying as female-to-male (F2M) transgender. What was this word to me then? Absolutely nothing. I had never heard it before and didn't know that something like it existed. Investigating, I found the term described me virtually to a T. I am transgender. Settling this into my head before speaking to the program director again, I prepared for what I would say. I sat with her that day
and explained what I needed to. Her response was the same.
I went onto the Internet and looked up transgender, finding a plethora of information from youth and adults: support forums, Web pages, clothing and passing tips, and legal information. I was overwhelmed at first but excited for myself. I had found the answer to something that had troubled me almost my entire seventeen years. Betty, my family worker, set up a meeting with the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (GLBTQ) Group Home called Waltham House, and they came to speak with me at my program. I was set free from my cage within the first three minutes of meeting Kerry and Anne. The second I walked into the room, they asked me how I would like to be addressed, what pronoun and what name. I was stunned and quietly replied, “Alex, and, um, in the male pronouns, please.”
Before the meeting, I had a lot of trouble. At school, the teachers were instructed not to accept my papers if they had Alex on them. Kids were getting suspended for calling me Alex and the girls who I lived with threw hurtful and homophobic/transphobic insults in my face. Ten minutes into the meeting, the advisors from Waltham House said that there was no reason why I could not live as Alex. And so began my adventure living as an out transgender youth.
The reaction from the people around me was mixed: some good, some confused, and some ignorant. The teachers slowly began working on switching the name and pronouns they were using when addressing me. It was extremely hard for them because they had known me for a year and a half as a female. The kids at my house were ambivalent about it and some accepted the idea while others hated me. I faced so much adversity that at some points I wondered whether it was worth it to be myself.
Now, as a resident at Waltham House, I live full-time as Alexzander Colin Rasmussen. I am eighteen years old and can't wait to legally change my name. Some days are harder than others, and it makes it so much easier knowing that I have a home where I am cared about and embraced for everything I am and everything I come with.