Monday
May102010
S/he: In The Beginning
Monday, May 10, 2010
At four and five years old, I liked to imagine myself all grown up. In my mind, I pictured my grown up self as a paper doll. I put on a suit and a hat and added a briefcase. My shoes were shiny and wing-tipped. I had sharp creases ironed down the front of my pants. I had a strong but not overbearing chest, and there would be a wife, I was sure. She stood next to me in a dress. I had a man's name, which I thought might be Bob. I was going to be a businessman or a singer on television. There might be a son.
I saw myself everywhere. My father's hockey equipment smelled like I would one day, both musky and sour. Cowboy boots that came to the top of my baby-fat thighs would one day be mine. The bigger boys who lived down the street, the ones that scared me with their vulgar rough-housing, excited me. They were my future, sneaking cigarettes by the fence with pimples and downy mustaches. I admired the faded patches on their jeans where the material squashed their testicles. Men had soft, blue veins that stood out on the backs of their hands, and I thought them beautiful. I was in all these things. My body would grow into his and his and his, I was sure.
I was too short yet to reach the cupboards, and my hands were too small to work the big scissors, but I knew that just as I would eventually grow and learn how to read, my penis would appear. It was just something that came later, like adult teeth. The fact of my vagina was a small but temporary hurdle.
The more time I spent with other children, though, the more a suspicion crept into the back of my mind that I might not grow up to be a man. All of the boys that I knew were already boys, and all of the girls that I knew were already girls, if our exploratory searches under living room forts were any indication. Nobody else seemed to be becoming anything other than bigger versions of what they already were, and it occurred to me that my vagina might be a permanent fixture.
My mother had a hefty, metal mirror from the 1950s with cracked glass that scraped and slid within its frame. I dragged it down from the dresser in her bedroom, nearly crushing my toe when it accidentally thunked against the floor, and took it into my bedroom. Buck naked and shivering at the thought of getting caught, I sat with the rough carpet crushed against my bum and steadied the mirror with my feet. I angled it this way and that until I could see the object of my predicament. My vagina looked liked like a loosely curled fist, a limp lump of soft flesh. When I saw it, I knew that it was not mine. It was like looking at somebody else's elbow.
I could not stop staring at it, though. This thing that was so clearly not mine, with its fat brackets surrounding pink beneath; it seemed so impossible. I held its labia open. I held them closed. It was a temporary physical insanity to me. It had to be. I crossed my legs so that I could not see it. This thing had to be fixed. I cast about for answers and settled on just who would do it. Jesus was the obvious man.
In Sunday school, we had been given stiff paper sheets sporting colour drawings of Jesus with kids of all different races gathered around his legs. I was skeptical that that had really happened, because I had never seen so many races all together anywhere in my mainly suburban life, but I knew what it meant. He loved all children of all different kinds. Armed with the surety only naïvety can float, I saw no reason why Jesus would not grant this different child's request.
That night, I formed my earnest request:
Dear Jesus, I love you. I really, really love you. I am a boy, and I don’t have a penis, I prayed, eyes squeezed tight against my lamplight. and I really, really need one. Thank you. The End.
I wasn't certain that I loved this person whom I had never met, but I felt that I had to be clear about love part, because I needed him to do this for me.
Knowing that I was going to wake up right, I was happy in the dark that night. I pushed my chubby hand with the dimpled knuckles between my legs to feel the small mound of flesh that claimed me every day, the one that made people tell me I was pretty, and wondered what my name would be in the morning. I thought about the smell of shaving cream and those special brushes that men used to lather on the soap. I pulled the blankets up under my chin, pushed my stuffed bear into his position high on my pillow where he could watch the dark for me, and went to sleep.
In the morning after that first prayer, I woke up giddy and pushed my hand into my underwear, eager to feel my new body part, but there was no penis there, not even a beginning nub. My continuing femaleness puzzled me. Did Jesus really love me like they said? He must. Everyone said he did. This would just take some time.
I thought about how we had grown plants from seeds in Sunday school. We stuck a seed between a wad of wet paper towel and the inside of a clear plastic cup, and the next week the seed had sprouted so much that it seemed impossible for all of that green shoot to have been folded inside of that tiny seed. Eventually, we planted them in dirt in styrofoam cups and brought them home. That would be me. I was sure of it.
The next night, I prayed again, and the night after that, too. Every morning I reached down to find nothing there but that stupid bit of soft nothing, the placeholder, the parenthetical absence. After several days of earnest hope, I lost the sureness with which I had begun. God had stuck me with what I had, with a body that was not even mine, and my little heart burned hot with shame. Jesus, God, that tripartite knot of personalities who I had been taught extended his love to all, did not care for me. On that last morning, I climbed out of bed and marched into the kitchen to confront my mother.
"I don't believe in God anymore," I announced.
My mother looked aghast. "Why not?"
"Because if God loved me, he would have made me a boy."
My mother gripped the edge of the stove and looked up at the exhaust vent. "God, please forgive her." I could see that she was crying.
Belief was love. If God did not love me, then I would not love Him back, and, poof, He disappeared like fireworks smoke on a windy night. No more God. Without Him, I could no longer be the despised child.
---------------------
Read the second entry in this series, S/he: Stuck.
Both parts are reworked excerpts from a much longer piece I once wrote for an anthology which was never published.
To be clear, this is about the earliest stages of my conception of my own gender, an understanding that really began to take shape beginning at about age three. It was not long after the events in this story that I realized I was not strictly male or female. To this day, I maintain an outwardly feminine appearance with which I am not entirely comfortable.
I saw myself everywhere. My father's hockey equipment smelled like I would one day, both musky and sour. Cowboy boots that came to the top of my baby-fat thighs would one day be mine. The bigger boys who lived down the street, the ones that scared me with their vulgar rough-housing, excited me. They were my future, sneaking cigarettes by the fence with pimples and downy mustaches. I admired the faded patches on their jeans where the material squashed their testicles. Men had soft, blue veins that stood out on the backs of their hands, and I thought them beautiful. I was in all these things. My body would grow into his and his and his, I was sure.
I was too short yet to reach the cupboards, and my hands were too small to work the big scissors, but I knew that just as I would eventually grow and learn how to read, my penis would appear. It was just something that came later, like adult teeth. The fact of my vagina was a small but temporary hurdle.
The more time I spent with other children, though, the more a suspicion crept into the back of my mind that I might not grow up to be a man. All of the boys that I knew were already boys, and all of the girls that I knew were already girls, if our exploratory searches under living room forts were any indication. Nobody else seemed to be becoming anything other than bigger versions of what they already were, and it occurred to me that my vagina might be a permanent fixture.
My mother had a hefty, metal mirror from the 1950s with cracked glass that scraped and slid within its frame. I dragged it down from the dresser in her bedroom, nearly crushing my toe when it accidentally thunked against the floor, and took it into my bedroom. Buck naked and shivering at the thought of getting caught, I sat with the rough carpet crushed against my bum and steadied the mirror with my feet. I angled it this way and that until I could see the object of my predicament. My vagina looked liked like a loosely curled fist, a limp lump of soft flesh. When I saw it, I knew that it was not mine. It was like looking at somebody else's elbow.
I could not stop staring at it, though. This thing that was so clearly not mine, with its fat brackets surrounding pink beneath; it seemed so impossible. I held its labia open. I held them closed. It was a temporary physical insanity to me. It had to be. I crossed my legs so that I could not see it. This thing had to be fixed. I cast about for answers and settled on just who would do it. Jesus was the obvious man.
In Sunday school, we had been given stiff paper sheets sporting colour drawings of Jesus with kids of all different races gathered around his legs. I was skeptical that that had really happened, because I had never seen so many races all together anywhere in my mainly suburban life, but I knew what it meant. He loved all children of all different kinds. Armed with the surety only naïvety can float, I saw no reason why Jesus would not grant this different child's request.
That night, I formed my earnest request:
Dear Jesus, I love you. I really, really love you. I am a boy, and I don’t have a penis, I prayed, eyes squeezed tight against my lamplight. and I really, really need one. Thank you. The End.
I wasn't certain that I loved this person whom I had never met, but I felt that I had to be clear about love part, because I needed him to do this for me.
Knowing that I was going to wake up right, I was happy in the dark that night. I pushed my chubby hand with the dimpled knuckles between my legs to feel the small mound of flesh that claimed me every day, the one that made people tell me I was pretty, and wondered what my name would be in the morning. I thought about the smell of shaving cream and those special brushes that men used to lather on the soap. I pulled the blankets up under my chin, pushed my stuffed bear into his position high on my pillow where he could watch the dark for me, and went to sleep.
In the morning after that first prayer, I woke up giddy and pushed my hand into my underwear, eager to feel my new body part, but there was no penis there, not even a beginning nub. My continuing femaleness puzzled me. Did Jesus really love me like they said? He must. Everyone said he did. This would just take some time.
I thought about how we had grown plants from seeds in Sunday school. We stuck a seed between a wad of wet paper towel and the inside of a clear plastic cup, and the next week the seed had sprouted so much that it seemed impossible for all of that green shoot to have been folded inside of that tiny seed. Eventually, we planted them in dirt in styrofoam cups and brought them home. That would be me. I was sure of it.
The next night, I prayed again, and the night after that, too. Every morning I reached down to find nothing there but that stupid bit of soft nothing, the placeholder, the parenthetical absence. After several days of earnest hope, I lost the sureness with which I had begun. God had stuck me with what I had, with a body that was not even mine, and my little heart burned hot with shame. Jesus, God, that tripartite knot of personalities who I had been taught extended his love to all, did not care for me. On that last morning, I climbed out of bed and marched into the kitchen to confront my mother.
"I don't believe in God anymore," I announced.
My mother looked aghast. "Why not?"
"Because if God loved me, he would have made me a boy."
My mother gripped the edge of the stove and looked up at the exhaust vent. "God, please forgive her." I could see that she was crying.
Belief was love. If God did not love me, then I would not love Him back, and, poof, He disappeared like fireworks smoke on a windy night. No more God. Without Him, I could no longer be the despised child.
---------------------
Read the second entry in this series, S/he: Stuck.
Both parts are reworked excerpts from a much longer piece I once wrote for an anthology which was never published.
To be clear, this is about the earliest stages of my conception of my own gender, an understanding that really began to take shape beginning at about age three. It was not long after the events in this story that I realized I was not strictly male or female. To this day, I maintain an outwardly feminine appearance with which I am not entirely comfortable.
Reader Comments (40)
Wow. So beautifully written. Also, so glad to be able to call you my friend.
Thank you for this. I have a friend who lives alternately as a male and female and the more stories I can read, the more supportive I can be. I always felt it wasn't fair to expect him to bear the entire burden of educating me, but it's not easy to find people willing to tell their stories. My heart is also breaking for that hopeful, faithful little child you were.
You're a very talented and honest writer. I appreciate your writings.
What a wonderfully beautiful and incredibly honest story of your childhood, and adulthood! Funny, and sad. I remember telling my Mom I wished I had been a boy, not for body parts or appearance, but for all the extras the boys got - later stay ups, more freedom, any activities they wanted. There were no barriers to anything they wanted to do or learn. In school girls were barred from certain athletic activities or in highschool from certain subjects that are necessary to live an independent life. A life I wanted.
I guess not many of us are actually extreme male or extreme female with parts of us wishing for this or that.
I applaud your courage to share your story! And thank you for it. You're a very interesting person, one I'm so glad to know.
Love,
Darlene
What a beautifully written post. Thanks so much for sharing.
This is amazing. You need to find print publication for this. Many, many more people need to see this. Not just because of the truth that it tells, but the beauty of the writing. You rock.
This helps me have greater understanding for a friend. I remember her talking about praying during puberty that God would finish what clearly was unfinished and make her outwardly female, as she understood herself to be. Her faith was shattered for a long time when that did not happen, and it has taken her many years to redefine her beliefs about herself, her God, her place in this world. What makes me sad is that other people have such rigidly defined beliefs about gender and they do and say things that are cruel and insensitive. We have so much shame built into our society around sexuality and gender, its time for people to expand their thought processes and belief systems to understand that everything they need to know about God and about gender and well, hell, about a LOT of things, can't be found in a 1200 year-old manuscript. But I digress. This is beautiful writing. I agree with the other commenters who think there should be an outlet for it to find its way into print publication.
Your writing was so clear I heard your voice narrating, calmly and evenly.
I would have more to say but I can't get it out just now. The image of a child praying so earnestly and with such a pure heart made my own heart ache.
This sounds twelve kinds of cheap, overused, insincere, trite...but seriously -- thank you for sharing this.
Well written, and I can certainly relate. Thank you for sharing this.
This is beautiful and for personal reasons I'll tell you about sometime, a little heartbreaking to read.
I wish there were some other options. Gender confines us far too much.
I never wanted to be a woman. I never thought it would happen to me. I didn't want to be a man. I don't feel comfortable as a woman...but do I want to be a man? It's like the binary nature of the thing is too extreme on either side.
But it's not a big struggle for me. So I am lucky in that.
Absolutely beautiful :) I agree with the others, this is extremely well-written. It feels heartfelt and passionate, thanks so much for sharing.
This was really eye-opening for me. While I personally am extremely comfortable in my own body/gender/skin, I understand there are people who are not, and I can only imagine how much help reading this might be.
Gripping, sad. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Lovely, really.
This is such a compelling read. As someone who is comfortable with my own gender, it's illuminating to gain some insight into the struggles of others who are not so fortunate.
A beautifully evocative, exploratory piece of writing.
Wow. So well written, so descriptive, so personal. The ignorant are alarmed by the unknown. Hopefully, some day diversity will be celebrated.
i'm so glad that this piece is seeing light. beautiful.
This is beautifully written Schmutzie! And funny too, because I can recognize so many of the sentiments you expressed in the first part too! Cowboy boots, blue veins, wingtips, briefcase-- I wanted all that too! I was convinced I was Will Robinson and used to stomp around the house in my dad's workboots-- I think that shortened my mother's life by at least 10 years!
Somehow it never went farther than that for me, though. I never did get around to wanting a penis, and eventually rejected Jesus because he never bestowed me with that pony that I was so convinced that I deserved.
I hope that once your mom got over the initial shock she had from your statement that she eventually accepted your unconventional viewpoint. I really like the fact that you live life on your own terms, fuzzy legs and all!
Oh, I'd wondered what you'd written. This was so tender and lovely and... I don't know. I don't necessarily find it sad, exactly. I think the weight of gender crushes everyone at some point - what's expected of us because of it, what comes attached to it, and how it fits and feels to wear it.
For me, the fact that you wrote this, that you reflect on it in this way... there's a lightness to it, some kind of acceptance. It's the beginning of a valid and important journey. And that's why it doesn't read like a sad thing to me. Does that make sense?
I love this piece. All of it, even the parts that made me wince in pain. You are brave and brilliant and a fantastic writer.
We humans are amazingly complex and there isn't any way to simplify us.
Thanks for this wonderful piece of writing.
Love this kind of open honesty about something so personal.
Ah, that little child. This squeezes my heart.
i loved this, Schmutzie. i identify with a lot of it, the liminality, the "i knew it was not mine"....but mostly, i love the pace of it, the capturing of the voice of the child, the presence of certainty between categories.
in TO a few weekends ago, i visited my college roommate, who was a queer-identified girl now living, fifteen years on, as a queer trans-identified male. once we got past the name change, it was easy. gender is a construct that permeates everything, and yet...in so many ways...an overlay over the people inside us.
fascinating. thank you for sharing it.
Thank you.
I've been thinking about this as my sons grow up. I don't want to put them in little boxes wrapped with a blue bow. I want them to feel comfortable and confident in the skin they're in and if they question it, I want them to explore with freedom. Folks worry about boy things and girl things. I must be so happy to have sons, but don't I crave a daughter? No. Why does my son have a little mermaid toy? Wouldn't he rather have a car? No. It goes so much farther than what they wear, what they play with, how they're perceived and treated. I want them to love who they are and to be able to express that without fear or shame. The small piece of you laid out here is beautiful beyond measure.
I am just so proud to know you.
This was just so beautifully written, and so fascinating to read.
And I would hereby like to nominate this for Five Star Friday. Is that allowed? Because it should be.
My heart twisted in my ribcage as I read this. Beautiful and sad.
Kerri Anne: I don't know if it's allowed, but I submitted it. :)
Wow, thank you for sharing so much of yourself. Amazing post.
Bodies. Brains. Hearts. So very goddamned fucking hard.
This was stunningly, heartbreakingly beautifully honest. Thank you.
Wonderful! I nominate this post for five star Friday!! Please =]
You are truly a brilliant writer. Thank you for sharing this piece, and this piece of you.
Just when I think your writing can't get any better, it does. That post was uncomfortable, exquisite, startlingly familiar... just wow. Go get yourself published already, Good Lord.
"I was in all these things." Gorgeous. No wonder 80 people have been telling me all week to read this. Rather amazing.
So much in this post mirrors my own journey. Though I was born with a penis, I've never wanted it. There were times that I, too, prayed to God to remove it and replace it with the vagina I should have been born with.
Thank you so much for sharing!
Regards,
Allison
this is absolutely amazing. amazing. i hope the following was not as painful as this part, but i don't think that's how it happened. i would LOVE to read the rest.
Thank you.
Thank you for taking me back to this intimate moment and seeing life through your eyes.
Thank you to Lunasea for her comment "I always felt it wasn't fair to expect him to bear the entire burden of educating me, but it's not easy to find people willing to tell their stories."
I'm very new to your blog - about 10 minutes in - do you have an It Gets Better video?
Is it rude of me to ask for more? No. Quality art causes its audience to beg for more, more, more!