Bad Boy

  “I’ve got a brand to maintain. You know how it is—you do the same on YouTube.”

  “Maintaining that brand is much more dangerous for you than me, Inge.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because women like you are being targeted by the men’s-rights lynch mob. And I’m worried.”

  She held my gaze. Inge’s intelligence was implacable, and somewhat predatory. A Venus flytrap patiently closing around each thought. I could never ask her an innocent question—in seconds she’d discover what I really meant, unearth every ulterior motive.

  “Women like me,” she said, “are always being targeted by men. I’ll be fine, Boy Scout.”

  Unlike Cressida, there was no mistaking her mockery. The words “men” and “boy” dripped with irony.

  Another moment of silent eye contact. The air between us teemed with all we’d left unsaid.

  Ingrid touched the door and I said, “Wait.”

  Her head half turned.

  I miss you. “Tell my princesses I love them.”

  Her face was pale and smooth as milk glass, her eyes empty. But finally she cracked that conspiratorial smile I knew so well.

  When she left I locked the door behind her. My palm stung. I was crushing the gel packet, wasting my precious T. The drug I had to take every single day for the rest of my life.

  Or else die.

  Not directly. Inge was right about that. But my life wasn’t worth living without it. Testosterone was a medical necessity because it was all that made living inside this body bearable.

  She didn’t get that. Nobody did.

  If only they knew what it felt like, being held hostage by your own skin.

  TODAY

  DELETED VLOG: DEPRESSION

  REN: This is the fifth time I’ve tried to make this video. Fuck it. Fuck putting a brave face on things. I’m not well, Internet. I’m telling one million strangers instead of telling my therapist, because I can’t afford him right now and what is therapy, really, but reflecting ourselves at another person and seeing what bounces back? Maybe I’ll find myself scattered somewhere in these million shards. Maybe all the pixels will come together, coalesce into a portrait of a sad, lost boy.

  I’m depressed.

  I haven’t said that out loud for years. It feels . . . terrifying.

  Last time I owned my depression was before I started T. Back then I thought it was just part of dysphoria. Once I fixed my body, once my brain soaked up the right hormone, I thought it’d stop. And for a while it did. Or at least transition kept me busy, distracted. There was always the next milestone to look forward to: My voice dropping, my beard coming in, my curves flattening out. Top surgery. Official document changes.

  I mean, just look. Look at how I used to be.

  [Cut to an older video clip.]

  . . . and my voice is still dropping. It feels like roots growing up through my chest, tangling around my throat. I can’t sing for shit. Like, it’s seriously bad. My roomie imposed a moratorium on shower singing. She’ll freeze me out—she flushes the toilet if I so much as hum. Thinks it’s funny when I scream in my new man voice. I kinda hoped I’d be a tenor, but I guess I’ll never have to worry about passing vocally now . . .

  [Cut to another clip.]

  You guys. You see this? This is my brand-spanking-new Illinois driver’s license. And that, right there, under Sex? That says Male.

  [Cut to another clip.]

  So, I did it. I scheduled top surgery. Three months from now, I’ll let a man in a mask drug me and touch my tits. When I wake up, I’ll have the adolescent boy-chest of my wildest dreams. This is happening. Really, truly happening. I feel . . . terrified. In a good way. I feel hopeful.

  [Cut to the present.]

  That was my life. Milestone to milestone.

  Now I’m all out of goals. Transition goals, anyway. All I’ve got left is to live.

  And I’m fucking miserable.

  I don’t get it. How was I more hopeful back then, before I passed, before people called me “sir” without snickering, before they shut up when I spoke and treated me with basic human decency because they assume I have a dick?

  My therapist calls it post-transition depression. It’s sort of like postpartum: You’ve done something big, something life-changing. You’ve given a piece of yourself away to make something new. Birth hurts; rebirth hurts, too.

  The weird thing is you can grow fond of pain. Of the sense of meaning it gives your stress and anxiety. When it’s gone, you drift. There’s no context anymore for why you feel down. You’re just empty. There’s an inexplicable ache, a hollowness that hungers for a cause. There should be something there, a knife, a thorn, something causing you to bleed. But there’s nothing.

  You just hurt, for no fucking reason at all.

  God, what is wrong with me?

  I can’t upload this. I can’t. It’s career suicide. I’ve got a brand to maintain, after all. The Internet pays to hear my oh-so-inspirational story of overcoming adversity. Nobody wants to hear how sad I am—you’re all fucking sad, too. The world is a cold, ugly place and you want me to be the shining light, the warm fuzzy feeling that gets you through the day. The Little Boy Who Could. I’m a trained fucking monkey, and all these likes and comments are the peanuts you throw to make me do tricks.

  What a joke. I can’t be real. I’m playing another role, Mr. Happy, Well-Adjusted Trans Guy. Because that’s the narrative. The only story I’m allowed to tell is how much I hated myself before transition, how happy I am now.

  I’m alone. One million people are watching my every move, and I’m utterly alone.

  Fuck this.

  [Reaches to turn off the camera.]

  TODAY

  VLOG #344: GIVEAWAY!

  REN: Hey, Internet! It’s your boy Ren here. Excuse the dark circles beneath my eyes—been a long night. Nothing exciting, I promise. I’m not on drugs. I’m not in love. Still Ren Solo.

  That’s . . . that’s fucking terrible. Sorry. Fuck, should I start over? Cut!

  [Jump cut.]

  So I promised you guys I’d have something awesome for you today, and here it is. Are you sitting down? At your resting heart rate? Okay. Today I’m doing an epic giveaway.

  [Ren tilts the camera to show a cardboard box stamped with logos.]

  My sponsor, Windy City Fitness, sent this huge crate of goodies to review. There’s way more product than I can use, so I’m gonna share the love. Check this out: whey protein powder, creatine, natural testosterone boosters, the works. Everything you need to get ripped like yours truly here. Shout-out to Windy City Fitness for making what I do possible.

  Guys, real talk: You don’t get rich slapping your face on the ’Tube. I earn pennies for every video I put up. And making videos isn’t easy—it takes time, energy, skill. I rely on sponsors to fill in the gaps: everything from the food I eat to the clothes on my back. It all comes from the support of companies like this. So show them some love and hit that link in the description below. They keep my electricity and Wi-Fi on.

  Now, let’s get to the nitty-gritty. I’ve been taking this whey protein for a while, and . . .

  ———

  For weeks Black Iris lay low. Laney didn’t want to ping Crito’s radar. Neither of us spoke of my connection to him—it felt tense, furled, like something I had to wait out till it unraveled. So I waited. Ellis and I sat on the roof of Umbra beneath a summer sky molting into autumn, shedding blue scales for silver. Leaves laureled our feet, the green slowly bronzing. Fall cast the city in precious metal, but soon the cold would tarnish away all color. Sometimes Blythe joined us, and it felt like sitting between my sweet little brother and wild older sister. I thought of Mina and Kari, my princesses, till my throat went tight like a wire. How are your sisters? Ellis said, and I could only shrug. In the distance the lake rippled. Somewhere two tiny pairs of pale olive feet would dip into the water, dash through sand. I imagined it sticking to their damp skin like brown sugar.


  At Umbra I spotted Cress slinking through the shadows. When I danced I felt the slide of her gaze over my body, sinuous and sly. For the first time in forever I was conscious of my hips, the femmey movements I made. Unlike Ellis, I’d never learned to own my girliness. So in typical male fashion, I overcompensated. Flirted. Drank. Hooked up. My mouth was a mash of musky rum and smeared lipstick. Then I got pissed that Cress could affect me like this, and put on guyliner and Blythe’s fuchsia eye shadow and a spandex muscle tee, because fuck gender stereotypes. I could be feminine if I wanted to. It didn’t make me any less a man. Besides, Cress would’ve seen my YouTube channel by now. She’d know what was in my pants. It didn’t matter.

  When a winsome boy put his hand on the curve of my waist, I shoved him away. He fell.

  People on the dance floor stared. I hid in a bathroom stall, covered in cold sweat.

  Not good.

  I needed back in with Black Iris. Another mission, another sexist shithead I could beat the stuffing out of. A male punching bag.

  Yeah, I’ve got issues with men.

  Got issues with women, too.

  I’ve hooked up hundreds of times since I transitioned and had a grand total of zero relationships. It’s not the sex—at least, once I figured out what the fuck I was doing. They came. I didn’t. Fine with me. No way would I get vulnerable with a stranger. It played out in my head: closeness, intimacy, her inevitable dismay when I refused to receive pleasure. Don’t you want me to make you feel good? she’d say, but I’d always hear, What’s wrong with you? Then came sympathy, concern. Attempts to fix me.

  What is it about broken men that’s so fucking irresistible to women? Don’t they realize they deserve better?

  I kept things short and sweet. Satisfied the urge, moved on before it became longing. Lived with that constant low-level loneliness and thought: This is safe. If I don’t get invested, I can’t be hurt.

  What’s wrong with me? I’d asked Armin. I’m becoming another male cliché. All I have is meaningless, emotionless sex. Is this really what guys are like?

  No, he said. It’s what you’re like.

  Thanks, doc.

  Years ago I’d made a mistake. I let someone in too far. Let her twist around my heart like barbed wire, and when I tried to pull free she ripped me to shreds. She loved that heart but not the body it was trapped inside, not the way that body was changing. Ingrid fucked me up pretty good. There was only one real way out of that pain, I decided. So I put a belt around my neck, just to see how it would feel. It felt good. It felt like a solution. So I tied the belt to a timber beam in my closet, to see how that would feel.

  They strapped me to a stretcher, after. Pricked me with silver needles (later Inge would prick me, 0.5 cc of T every other week), kept me in Velcro cuffs in the ER. I couldn’t stop throwing up. Compression of the vagus nerve. The vomit wire. For a while I was more in danger of dying from dehydration.

  Why did you do it? the doctor asked, and I said, Because this body is a cage.

  That got me referred to a gender therapist, finally.

  My parents didn’t visit. They told my sisters the suicide attempt succeeded. I almost expected a thank-you card. Ingrid sat at my bedside, stroking my hand. I don’t want to lose you, Sofie, she’d said.

  And I thought, But you already have.

  Laney told me how, in the hospital after her mother’s suicide, she’d felt like a ghost. People looked through her. When she spoke, no one seemed to hear. As if she were the dead one. It was like she killed us both, Laney said. Like she’d taken me with her.

  That was what being trans felt like. Dead to my family. To my sisters, to Ingrid. To the trophies and newspaper clippings and girls’ basketball scholarship, to all I’d done as her I’m still me, I said, still the same person inside. But no one heard or saw. They looked at old pictures, crying.

  Sometimes I was so sure of who I was.

  And sometimes, like tonight, I felt like a stranger standing in someone else’s life. Not even knowing myself.

  One thing always grounded me: human touch.

  This girl, Norah, had tenacity. She’d propositioned me once and I turned her down because Don’t fuck fans. But she kept coming back. One night she danced with Blythe and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The firm curve of her ass in her sheath dress. The velvety girl-down on her arms, glistening with peach-juice sweat. When she turned toward me, her dark hair curled in fingers of shadow at her throat. The animal in me roused. We spoke through glances, and Blythe bowed out as I stepped in. No conversation but body language: fingernails scraping stubble, hip bones colliding. Her softness molding to me like silk on stone. Norah ran her palm up the inside of my thigh and I grazed my rough cheek against her neck. Without words we left the dance floor, our fingers knotted loosely. I led her to a room under renovation, the walls half torn apart, wood like snapped bones and insulation frothing out, all the seams and guts showing, and in a darkness pierced by pins of streetlight I pressed her to a concrete pillar, my mouth on hers. Her thighs spread, lips parting. This. I could never get over this. How right it felt, a girl opening herself to me. How badly I wanted her to hold my whole body. How badly I wanted to be inside her. I slipped a hand beneath her dress and rubbed her panties till they clung wetly to her pussy. She clutched my dick, squeezing.

  That’s right. I have a dick.

  And it was as hard as any man’s would be.

  “I’m going to fuck you,” I growled, and nipped the ear I spoke into.

  Her spine arched. She tugged my fly. “Fuck me with this.”

  I let her open it a little, then pushed her hand away. When she gripped my crotch again I shoved my weight into it, let her feel all the heft and hardness of my body on hers. Small hands grasped at the slab muscle of my back. Nothing gets a man off more than feeling how desperately someone wants his dick. And she wanted mine.

  Not in me to deny a girl that.

  Dress hiked to her hips. Knees up, around my waist. I unzipped, and she was kind enough not to look as I pulled myself out, adjusted the angle, made sure the harness was tight. The silicone cock was warm from my body and she gasped when I slid inside. Slow, controlled. Inch by inch. I withdrew slightly and went a bit deeper, over and over, until the whole length of me was slick and I brought my hips all the way to hers and fucked her against the pillar, rock steady. All I felt was the pressure of plastic on my real dick, but through it I could sense her softening, spreading to take me deeper as she clawed the nape of my neck. Our voices played against distant club music: the grit in mine, throaty and low, and hers high, breathy, all smoke. My hands cupped her ass. She was air, weightless. So light. It set off a strange alchemy inside me, converting every muscle to metal, my blood to hot oil. Making me into some monstrous machine. It took all my self-control not to hurt her—not because I wanted to but because I wanted to fuck as hard as I could, make her feel how possessed I was by need. Testosterone is liquid libido. The chemical link between sex and violence. The same hormone that fuels lust also ignites aggression. That chemistry plays out inside the dirty laboratories of our cells and sometimes the difference between sex and violence seems as small as a molecule, a safe word.

  An image flashed into my head: a butterfly of blood spreading on Crito’s wall.

  It should have been him. The monster whose ear Crito whispered into. My Poseidon. My hand on the gun, his forehead taking that bullet.

  Giving it to him as hard as he gave it to me.

  “Baby, don’t stop,” Norah moaned.

  I kept going, dutifully, mechanically. And she came, because I knew how to hit both her clit and G-spot on each stroke. But I was numb. With one hand she feathered my damp hair, the other tracing the ridges of my chest. She inhaled. Sweat and the musk of sex mixed into a virile cologne.

  This was supposed to be the ultimate fantasy. Fucking a beautiful girl, making her come. The thrill of her basking in my masculinity. Of being 100 fucking percent man.

  Yet all I could think of wa
s the sound of that bullet. The one that found flesh.

  When we left the room a shadow leaned at the end of the hall, watching us.

  Cressida.

  As I washed up in the bathroom I watched a familiar stranger in the mirror: his face all lean angles, contoured with dark scruff. His lips full and salmon red, his eyelashes a touch too thick, too long. In clothes he was pure male but beneath the fabric was a chimera. Thin pink crescents limned his pecs, still visible through the tats. His pubis was a smooth sexless arch, like a Ken doll’s.

  The rigid packer in his boxer briefs dug into my thigh.

  God, my life was fucking weird.

  I couldn’t get off—tried jerking it in a stall but only got sore—so I wandered the club, through faceless silhouettes in throes of ecstasy and fervor, bodies distorted, mangled by bliss. Armin deejayed in the Cathedral and I watched him like I used to, trying to understand what made him different from me. He moved slowly, fluidly, almost as if drugged, but the drug was confidence. For every dozen movements I made, he made one. The right one.

  Something was wrong with me. I hadn’t been this moody and insecure since I was pre-T.

  What was wrong with me was Cress.

  I tried to catch her as she followed me around. Whenever I got close she was talking to someone, or dancing, or disappearing. Those leather pants looked painted on. Why the stare? Another girl who saw me as a circus freak, the Bearded Lady? I didn’t have room in my life for that shit. If Laney thought she could replace me with some transphobe—

  But she wouldn’t. Laney was vehemently antiphobic.

  My head whirled.

  “Excuse me,” a girl said. Fire-engine-red lips. Fuck. “You’re Ren, right?”

  I looked intently into her eyes till she lowered them. “Yes.”

  “Oh my god. Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “I’ve seen all your videos. I’ve been watching since you started. You’re my favorite YouTuber ever. I guess other people tell you that a lot, but I mean it. You’re so, so brave. You’re one of my heroes.”