The only thing in Sam’s arsenal to combat the zesty fumes was a collection of candles that rivaled the altar of a Catholic church. She had every seasonal and exotic fragrance imaginable laid out on her windowsill and lit them all to battle Garliholic’s. Sometimes the combination of so many scents gave Sam a headache, but it was better than smelling the restaurant’s sixty-clove chicken pasta specialty (which people ordered in droves every night despite all the one-star ratings Sam posted on Yelp).
The layered smell also acted as a repellent for Sam’s nosy mother, keeping her away from Sam’s room and out of her things—a happy byproduct.
Deep down, Sam was grateful for her intrusive mom and the garlic restaurant below them. Being smoked out of her own bedroom and preyed upon like a three-legged field mouse was perfect motivation to get the hell out of Downers Grove. As sad as Sam was about separating from her friends, she was counting down the days until she moved to Providence and attended the Rhode Island School of Design.
Sam was an extremely gifted artist for two reasons: she was talented and she was poor. She learned early in life that if she wanted nice things she would have to get creative and make them herself. And Sam was planning to make a career out of this skill.
Of all the credentials in her application, the Rhode Island School of Design admissions board had been most impressed with Sam’s portfolio of the do-it-yourself furniture in her bedroom and the descriptions of how she created it.
Dumpster Diving Décor is how I would describe my unique style of design, Sam wrote.
The platform and headboard of my twin mattress are made from a stack of wooden crates I found on the side of the road. Above my bed, the suspended bookshelves were shopping baskets I found in an alley, painted red, and nailed to the wall. My lounge chairs used to be halves of a huge tire I rolled home from a junkyard. I lined the inside with red cushions and use the hubcap as a coffee table between them. My bedroom didn’t have a closet, so I made a wardrobe out of an old fridge from the restaurant below my apartment. I painted the appliance turquoise and stuck the handles of an old mop and broom through it to hang my clothes.
The lighting in my apartment is terrible, so I took a bicycle wheel, wrapped it in Christmas lights, replaced the bulbs with empty liquor bottles to magnify the light, spray painted everything gold, and created a chandelier any rock star would be envious of. I made a stand for my record player and vinyl collection out of a stack of 1950s suitcases from my late grandfather’s attic. I covered a wall with the record covers and now the Rolling Stones, the Smiths, the Knack, Gang of Four, and the Killers watch over my bedroom like rock guardian angels.
My mother made the mistake of giving me her old vanity set. She expected me to keep it in pristine condition, but I painted it black, beat it with a chain (that part was just for fun), covered it with hundreds of witty bumper stickers, and now I use it as a computer desk. I’m not a big fan of mirrors, so I covered the oval plate of glass with pictures of my friends and magazine cutouts of my favorite television show, Wiz Kids.
All it took was one glimpse of Sam’s portfolio and anyone could tell she had a gift. (The portfolio also made it obvious Sam was in desperate need of financial aid to attend RISD, so she passed it along to every scholarship program she applied to as well.) However, recycling objects of convenient shapes and sizes was much more than just a hobby for her. Restoring what others had cast aside, giving it a new purpose, and granting it a new identity was Sam’s greatest therapy. She only wished transforming herself could be as easy as upgrading the trash she found—but Sam would need much more than a fresh coat of paint for what she had in mind.
“Well, I’m gonna try to rest,” Sam said into her computer. “Good night, see you tomorrow!”
“Good night, Sam,” Topher said back at her.
Just as Sam logged off her computer, her mother, Candy Rae Gibson, walked into her bedroom without knocking. She had a bulging shopping bag in one hand and a vodka gimlet in the other. If there were a statue erected in Candy’s honor, it would need these items to look authentic.
“Good Lord, Samantha,” Candy said, and winced at the smell of the candles. “Do you really need all those going at once? It’s like a séance in here—but I can’t tell if you’re summoning the dead or scaring off the living.”
“Mom, you’re violating my privacy when you don’t knock,” Sam said.
“Oh, please,” Candy said, and rolled her eyes. “I wish there was something going on in this room that warranted privacy. The day I catch you watching pornography or smoking a joint I’ll die of shock.”
“Noted,” Sam said under her breath.
The fact that Sam was Candy Rae Gibson’s daughter was proof God had a sick sense of humor. In Sam’s opinion, her mother was feminine to a fault. Candy always had big hair, long nails, wore too much makeup, and hadn’t owned a pair of pants since the eighties. She was very friendly but not very bright, and often reminded people of a large cocker spaniel.
Candy worked as a hairdresser at a local salon and told all her clients at great length and in great detail how she was crowned Miss Georgia Peach 1999 at just eighteen years old—not that any of them asked. Coincidently, she had also been pregnant with Sam at the time, which made her cry on demand better than all her competitors. The open floodgates following the “world peace” question were what secured her the crown. Occasionally, after Candy had one too many vodka gimlets, Sam would find her waltzing around the apartment in her old tiara and sash.
“What do you want, Mother?” Sam asked as if her presence was causing her physical pain.
“I just got back from the store and picked you up some clothes I thought you’d like for your trip.”
Candy emptied the shopping bag on Sam’s bed. To her daughter’s horror, it was a pile of tank tops, miniskirts, lacy bras, and neon panties. They were clothes for a barbecue at Barbie and Ken’s, not a cross-country road trip with her friends.
“You know I wouldn’t be caught dead in any of those,” Sam said.
“Would it kill you to add a little color to your wardrobe?” Candy asked. “Everything you own looks like it was bought at a nineties grunge concert. You’ve got the same figure I had when I was your age; I wish you’d let it show once in a while.”
“That’s how I dress,” Sam said. “It’s what I like to wear, it’s what I’m most comfortable in, and that’s always how it’s going to be.”
“You might change your mind one day,” Candy said with a shrug.
The hopeful hairdresser looked from side to side as if she knew something Sam didn’t.
“Mom, you’re doing that thing with your eyes again,” Sam said. “If you have something to say, please just spit it out.”
“You want to know the truth? Fine, here it is,” Candy said. “I stopped by the psychic on Fourth Street after work today. She told me a bunch of really interesting things. Apparently I was royalty in a past life, I’m going to make a good investment soon, Grandpa says hello, yada yada yada.… But the most interesting stuff she had to say was about you.”
“The psychic told you I needed new clothes?”
“No, she told me there’s a boy in your life that you aren’t telling me about!”
Sam’s eyes bulged so large they almost rolled out of her head.
“What?” she said.
“I told her that couldn’t possibly be true because I would have known if you were dating someone,” Candy went on. “But Madame Beauffont was adamant about it. She couldn’t give me his name or age but described him in great detail. He sounds perfect for you—I’m talking soul mate material! He listens to the same music as you, likes making things out of trash, and he even watches that ridiculous show you’re so obsessed with. Now, I know I’m the last person you like to talk to about these things, but if there was a boy, or a boy you had your eye on, I thought you might want a cute outfit to wear around him.”
Sam tried to stop her mom from talking with every gesture she knew, but her mouth was
like a runaway train with no conductor.
“Seriously, Mom?” she said. “I’ve told you a million times there are no boys in my life. Are you going to take Madame Beauffont’s word over mine?”
“She’s a world-renowned clairvoyant, Samantha,” Candy said. “Why is it so hard for you to talk to me about these things? Having a boyfriend is perfectly natural for a girl your age. I’m trying to be supportive but you freak out every time I bring up the subject. Are you a lesbian or something?”
“No, I’m not a lesbian!”
“Then what are you so ashamed of, Samantha?” Candy asked.
Sam went quiet. She knew why it was such a touchy subject; she just wasn’t ready to have the conversation with her mother yet. It was beyond Candy’s level of comprehension.
“I’m not ashamed of anything,” Sam said. “Boys just aren’t a priority for me right now. I wish you’d respect that.”
Candy threw her hands in the air in surrender and put all the clothes back into the shopping bag.
“I’m not trying to be disrespectful, I’m just impatient,” Candy said. “I’ll take these back to the store tomorrow. Now I’ve got to get out of this room before those candles give me a migraine.”
Candy left Sam’s room in a dramatic and defeated sulk. The psychic had been so accurate about everything else—how could she have been so wrong about this?
However, if Candy could read her daughter as well as Sam read her mother, she would know her daughter wasn’t being completely truthful. The psychic was right: There was a boy Sam had been hiding from her mother, but it wasn’t a boyfriend like Candy so desperately hoped. The boy in her daughter’s life was her daughter.
There were very few things Sam Gibson knew for a fact, but she knew with all her heart, body, and soul that he was transgender.
When he was young, Sam never thought twice about his hatred of wearing dresses, his reluctance to let his mother put his hair up in a bow, or his preference for playing with the boys in his neighborhood as opposed to the girls. He despised the phrases little girl and young lady, but that was because they were always followed with instructions to sit up straight or behave a certain way. Sam didn’t realize until he was much older that these were subtle hints his true self was sending him.
Sam had always been different from other girls, but it was around the third grade when his feelings surpassed being different and something felt blatantly wrong. For the first time, he and his classmates were no longer students, but divided into groups of young men and women. The segregation seemed to come with an invisible set of new rules, expectations, and restrictions that he had never put on himself. It made him uncomfortable but he didn’t understand why. He knew he was a girl—that was obvious—so why didn’t he feel like one? Why did he feel like a boy on the inside? Why did he want to be treated like one?
It was confusing, frustrating, and unfair all at once and the feeling got stronger the more time passed.
Sam’s childhood was haunted with questions he couldn’t answer. Was he a freak of nature? Was something broken inside of him? Had God made a mistake with him? Was God punishing him for something? He attended Sunday school with his friend Joey so he could learn how to pray and ask God to fix him. Every night Sam prayed to wake up the following morning in the correct body, but his prayers were never answered.
In the sixth grade, the beginning stages of puberty felt more like a hijacking than a natural progression. His body wasn’t growing as much as it was betraying him. Every day he was altered a little more into something he wasn’t meant to be. It didn’t matter how many health videos he watched in preparation, the thought of emerging from his teens as a woman seemed foreign and improbable, like a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon as a spider.
Sam thought if he ignored the changes, his body might reject or reverse them. Instead of asking for a bra, Sam wrapped an ace bandage around his developing breasts until his chest appeared flat. The more they grew, the tighter he’d suppress them—sometimes the bandage left bloody cuts around his torso. Eventually he purchased a sports bra that gave the same effect, but it strangely felt like a moment of defeat; he was losing the war with his own body.
It was all so difficult for Sam to grasp; he didn’t expect anyone else could possibly understand. He was afraid his friends and mom would treat him like Frankenstein’s monster if they knew the truth, so Sam put up a strong guard, preventing anyone from getting too close and preventing himself from letting anything telling slip out. Sam thought this prevention was the only way he could protect himself, but sadly it sent him into an asphyxiating isolation. Even when surrounded by his closest friends, Sam felt completely alone.
It wasn’t until middle school that Sam even heard the word transgender. Of course he had read the word once or twice before, but something about hearing it opened his eyes to its meaning. He was flipping through television channels late one night and came across a rerun of an old talk show. The headline read Transgender in America and the host interviewed two trans women and one trans man. Sam was on the edge of his seat as he watched the program. The trans guests talked about the struggles of growing up as the opposite gender, the frustration of living in a world that didn’t understand them, and the freedom that came with their transitions.
As if the dust had been cleared off the windshield of his mind, Sam realized for the first time that he was trans, too. He couldn’t be a freak of nature, or God’s mistake, and he certainly wasn’t a monster when there were millions of people just like him around the world. Sam was embarrassed it hadn’t clicked before, but transgender wasn’t a term used regularly on the streets of Downers Grove.
By the time Sam reached high school, he wasn’t tormented by questions about who he was, but was besieged with questions like: What should I do next? What are the steps of transitioning? How many do I want to take? Do I tell my friends and family? Will they accept me for who I really am? Am I strong enough to get by if they don’t?
The information Sam found and the people he spoke with online were helpful, but many recommended he find a counselor he could talk with in person. Besides covering his share of the road trip (and wanting to leave for college with a little cash in his pocket), one of the reasons Sam got a summer job at Yolo FroYo was to pay for sessions with a therapist. He made his first appointment with Dr. Eugene Sherman, a clinical psychologist whose office was walking distance from his work.
The psychologist was older than Sam was expecting, he had more hair growing out of his ears than his head, he didn’t make eye contact with his receptionist, and he displayed a framed picture of himself with George W. Bush in his waiting room. There were plenty of warning signs, but Sam was so thankful to finally have someone to talk to, he ignored them.
“So you believe you’re a man trapped inside a woman’s body?” Dr. Sherman asked.
“Oh gosh, I hate it when people put it that way,” Sam said. “That sounds like dialogue from an eighties’ sitcom. I’d just say I’m a female-to-male transgender person—it sounds much more factual and less like a punch line.”
“Have you shared any of this with your friends?” Dr. Sherman asked.
“No,” Sam said. “My friend Joey comes from a really religious family, so I’m not sure what he would think. Mo can be really dramatic, so she’s not the first person I want to tell. And Topher—well, the news might be hardest on him.”
“You don’t think he’ll accept you?”
“It has nothing to do with acceptance,” Sam said. “Don’t get me wrong—Topher’s like a saint. He could have gone to any college he wanted, but he’s staying in town to help his mom take care of his disabled little brother. Telling Topher the truth will only be difficult because… well, because he has a crush on me.”
“Is the feeling reciprocated?”
“You mean, do I have a crush on Topher?” he asked. “I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about it. I’m definitely attracted to men, if that’s what you’re asking. But I’ve been so focused on
being myself that being with someone else hasn’t really been a priority. Does that make sense?”
The psychologist made a note of it.
“And what do your parents think?”
“My mom couldn’t handle it,” Sam said, and shivered at just the thought of telling her. “She cries at every episode of Grey’s Anatomy—I can’t imagine what this would do to her. She’d probably take me to a witch doctor or hide estrogen pills in my food.”
“And what about your father?”
“Oh, I’ve never met my dad,” Sam said. “He was long gone before my mom found out she was pregnant.”
“Have you ever had a stable father figure in your life?”
“Lots of figures, but never stable.” Sam laughed. “My mom bounced from boyfriend to boyfriend, job to job, and city to city, dragging me all the way up the Mississippi River until we settled in Downers Grove. She made me call her ‘Big Sis’ until I was eight. If that doesn’t paint the family dynamic I’m working with, I don’t know what will—hence why I’m here.”
Dr. Sherman found this remarkably interesting and made several notes.
“Well, Ms. Gibson, I have wonderful news,” the psychologist said. “You’re not transgender.”
After spending almost an hour sharing his deepest secret, this was the last thing Sam expected to hear.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“Growing up without a father and with an undependable mother, I assume there were many times in your childhood when you had to act as your own parent,” Dr. Sherman said very confidently. “You had no choice but to assume the role of caretaker, not only for yourself, but at times for your mother as well. In the absence of a male presence, you had to be ‘the man of the house,’ so to speak. Therefore, it is perfectly understandable why you desire a male identity.”
Sam felt like he had driven his car to a body shop for repairs and the mechanic was calling it a horse.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s accurate,” he said. “I’m transgender because I identify with a sex that differs from my body. It has nothing to do with not having a father figure in my life.”