Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin Read Free Book Online Page B

telling us what classes to go to. I just sat there, so happy, with my purse — my big, black purse. I walked to class swinging it, and my friend was going, “What the fuck are you doing?”
    “I’m a girl.”
    “Okay, you’re crazy.”
    “Well, I just want to be a girl.”
    And he was, like, “But aren’t you gay?”
    “No, actually, I’m not gay. I’m transgender.”
    He couldn’t grasp the fact. He thought a boy dressing in girls’ clothes is gay. Period. Whatever.
    As I walked down the hall, the freshmen were entering the school. When one freshman saw me, he was, like, “Hey, Mami, you looking so good. What are you doing here?”
    I was, like, “Oh, my God, I guess I look like a girl!”
    A big smile fills Christina’s face.
    So many of the freshmen were hitting on me. I guess they were being macho. Finally one of the older boys told the younger ones, “That’s not a girl. She’s a
he,
a senior.” And they all started laughing at that boy, saying that he was gay because he hit on me. They were making fun of him.

    I quickly became the school’s joke. It was really the underclassmen that had a problem with me. They found my female MySpace account — I had a MySpace account as a woman and I had a MySpace account as a man. My cross-dressing pictures were on the female account. There, I first introduced myself as Christina. I used that account to talk as a woman to different men. It was my way of escaping reality while I was in what I call my androgynous phase.
    Someone in the school — to this day I don’t know who did it — found that account and printed out all my crossing pictures. They posted them all over the hallways. It didn’t bother me. I said, “Oh, look at me! I’m so pretty in those pictures.” I looked great in those pictures. I liked the attention. It was guilty pleasure. It’s really weird. I was so comfortable transitioning, I was happy to actually begin. Whenever boys gave me attention, good or bad, they were recognizing my femininity. That made me really happy. The only thing that bothered me was when somebody wrote
fag
on my picture. Somebody also wrote it on my locker.
    People didn’t know how to take what I was doing. They were shocked — including teachers and the principal. The principal called me to the office. He and the dean wanted to talk to me.
    “Matthew, you need to cut your hair,” the principal said.
    “Why?”
    “Because that’s school policy. You have to keep it above the collar.”
    “Okay, I’ll keep it above the collar.”
    “And you need to get rid of those bangs.”
    “But what’s wrong with bangs? They’re above my collar.”
    “No, you have to read the rules. It says no bangs.”
    “Okay, fine,” I said, “I’ll sweep it to the side. But I’m not getting rid of my bangs.” The dean, the principal, and me have always had a problem.

    Dress Down Day is when you don’t have to wear a uniform. You can wear whatever you want.
Dress Down Day?
I came into school my usual self — makeup, hair done, nails on — and I wore a pink sweater, a girls’ American Eagle sweater. I wore my mom’s jeans; I actually fit into my mom’s jeans, but they were really tight around the butt and hips. And I wore these flats from Payless that I had bought. At that point, I started progressively buying women’s clothes and throwing out the boys’ clothes.
    I wasn’t taking hormones yet. I was waiting. I had gone to Callen-Lorde and started counseling. Their rule is that you have to be eighteen and take counseling for four months before you get hormones.
    I sat down in homeroom and took out my makeup bag. I was putting on my mascara, which always embarrassed my friends. “Matthew, don’t do that shit here. What are you doing?”
    “I don’t care what people think. I’m going to do what I want.” And on the loudspeaker comes, “
Please send Matthew V. to the principal’s office. NOW!
”
    And everybody was going, “Oooooh, you’re going to get in