I Claim my Identity

Other than the boys I played poker with at school, my only other friend was Cindy. I went to Cindy’s house a couple of times every week. I had a crush on Cindy ever since we were in kindergarten. Cindy and I were born on the same day and best friends. Her mom was friendly.

When I entered puberty, I would occasionally crawl up on Cindy’s roof and sit for hours, just to watch her. I had no way of telling her how I felt, so I pretended that I liked her brother, Jack.

“Well, he doesn’t have a girlfriend, so why not?” Cindy said.

“Oh, I am his girlfriend. He just sometimes forgets that. He would be proud of me if I were 5 foot 10 inches and 115 pounds, not 5 foot 4inches and 135 pounds.”

“Terry, you’re a riot panic. You think because you don’t look like a Hollywood actress, you are inadequate.”

One Wednesday afternoon when I was at Cindy’s house pasting in S&H Green Stamps into the rewards book, her mother suggested, “Teresa, you are very well proportioned. You should maximize your looks.”

I was named Teresa, after Mother Teresa, my mother told me, but in second grade I insisted I be called Terry.

I was not trying to be disrespectful when I said, “Mrs. Lynn, you already told me ‘pretty is as pretty does.’

“Yes, I think that came from The Canterbury Tales.”

“I don’t think it was from that book. You’re thinking about the movie Forest Gump. Besides, “I have no intention of hunting for a husband around here.”

“We sure don’t want you hunting for a husband at this age. But, you are shifting from, girlhood to womanhood,” Mrs. Lynn said.

“I’m fine with books,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. People die from reading books.”

“What are you talking about, Mom?” Cindy asked.

“I knew this girl in high school named Louise who was reading all the time, even when she was walking down the street. One day, she was reading a book she had just checked out from the library, she had her nose in it while crossing the street and got hit by a car and died. Reading killer her.

“That sounds pretty traumatic,” I said. Still, I’d rather take my chances with a book than with a guy.”

“Why do you feel that?” she asked.

“It feels like girls are supposed to make men desire them and that girls need male attention to be popular. I guess I’m just an outcast.”

Seventeen is full of photos for beauty products and fashion. The fashions don’t come in my size. The articles tend to babble on and on. The real guts of the articles are about how to attract men and entertain them. Romanticism is a cultural tool of male power to keep women from self-awareness. It claims that a woman can be fulfilled sexually only by vicarious identification with a man who enjoys her. Thus romance and eroticism preserves the sex caste system.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about Teresa, but you should doll yourself up a bit.”

“I’ll never look like those models in the Breck shampoo ads,” I said. “Now that I am almost in puberty, I think it shall require grim determination just to get through it.”

I think Cindy was worried how I was going to face the aftermath of puberty, but for the wrong reasons. My feelings were confusing and I did not know how to tell Cindy how I really felt.

“Are you alright, Terry? Cindy asked me

“It seems like girls are supposed to make men desire them and that girls need male attention to be popular. I guess I’m just an outcast.”

*****

My father was the one who insisted I be more feminine, which is why he left me on Macy’s second floor. Before he left me he told the sales woman, “I am Robert MacTavisch. I have an account here. Please pick out some well-made clothes with good lines for my daughter.” Then he retreated.

I think I frightened the saleswoman whose pancake makeup came to an abrupt end in a mask like line at her jawline and whose bifocals hung from a strand of shiny beads like a necklace, resting on her bosom. She had more lipstick on her teeth than on her lips. She said, “I suggest that you select styles that are slenderizing and lengthening.’

“I responded, “Ma’am, you’ve made a great suggestion, but, I’m going to New York City to live as a beatnik. All my clothes will be black.”

She ignored my comment, selected several frilly outfits, and urged me to try them on in the dressing room. She cornered me into the stall with the pink fabric that hung like shower curtain, hung the outfits on the hook, stepped out and drew the “shower curtain” shut.

I stood there, looking in the mirror, which is something I rarely did, and never in a full-length mirror, and saw for the first time my true self—a male.

I stepped out of the dressing room and told the lady that nothing fit. Then I took the escalator down to the boys and men’s department. All Dad would know is that I Mande a purchase of $153 at Macy’s. He seemed pleased that I had three full Macy’s bags when he picked me up at the department store.

*****

Dad dropped me off at the front door and said he had to go back to the offices. I heard Mom talking on the phone and went upstairs to my room. I took a pair of Levi’s 105 jeans, and a plaid shirt, removed the tags, and changed clothes. Then I went downstairs and into the kitchen.

“Hello Teresa,” my mother said.

“Terry” I corrected her.

“How was your shopping spree.”

“Productive.”

She looked at me and said, “You should model them for him when he comes home.

“I think he is going to be in late. He was headed back to his office.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Besides, he is not going to like what I selected. They’re all similar to what I am wearing now.”

“I that the current trend? she asked. Are girls dressing like boys the new fad?”

“No I’m more comfortable in the clothes. Mom, I don’t think I am a girl, I think I am a boy. You know, like a trans-sexual”

“Teresa, ah Terry, you are not trans-sexual.”

“But I feel like a boy.”

“Come with me,” she said and headed to the living room.

I followed and sat next to her on the sofa.

“Do you know what a hermaphrodite is?” she asked.

I shook my head no.

“Do you know what genitalia are?”

I nodded.

“You had them cut off my penis? I want it back!”

“It’s not that easy Teresa…”

“Terry, Terry, Terry. My name is Terry.”

I stormed out of the living room and up the stairs to my room. I opened my closet and ripped all the clothes off their hangers and threw them on the floor. I dumped my dresser drawers on to the pile. Then I took my new clothes out of the bags and hung them in the closet. In that moment, I swore I would live my life as a male. It was my body, my decision.

"What are you going to tell people at school?” my mother asked. “This is so embarrassing.”

I told them they had two choices: they could make me go back to my current school, and I’d tell everyone how they had me butchered, or, they could send me to private school where no one knew me. They choose the latter and boarding school one state over.

I was a popular guy in my new school and a good athlete. I had to be discrete, especially in the locker room and on dates. As soon as I graduated high school, I went to San Francisco and found a doctor who could reattach my proper genitalia.

Years later, I went back to my old hometown. My parents had moved soon after I left for boarding school. I went by Cindy’s house and stood outside her bedroom window. As I stood and watched her undress, I felt that familiar lust the deep feeling I’d always had for her made my reattached appendage swell with pride.