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The sun shines harshly and bright; yellow and orange burn into Jessie's closed eyelids. Her body feels weighed down to the ground, unmovable. The grass below her is dry and itchy, and her hands pull at it absently. The vibrations of the roots tearing is a nice feeling. Her thoughts run wildly in her head, a constantly changing cloud of them twisting and dancing in her imagination, wild and unkempt. She's in the first grade.
Other kids scream and run beyond her view. She’s okay with school. She likes her friends, she guesses, even if they make her be the dog when they play house. She's good at it. Woof.
There's a group of boys over her head and in the shade, digging some sort of hole. It sounds like fun. They're shrieking with laughter and she can almost feel the ground rumble as the shovel plunges into it. She'd ask to join but they'd laughed her away last time. She doesn't really remember why, but it hurt her feelings, and she ended up crying to the teacher. Now the group refuses to talk to her. Lesson learned.
The dry grass is nice, anyway. She makes herself good company.
She's about to fall asleep when she feels a sudden pain and hears an exaggerated yell from above her. Then a big smack. She immediately opens her eyes, making some sort of squeaky surprised noise, but she can't see anything. Everything's blue and dark. The sun burnt her eyes.
Weird occurrence temporarily forgotten, she sits up and rubs at her face. When she can finally see again, one of the kids from her class is staring at her apologetically, sitting with his legs out in front of him and covered in dusty dirt.
“Sorry,” he says, voice squeaky.
“What,” she replies, more asking herself than him, before she remembers he’d basically just almost killed her. “Oh! It's okay.” She tries a smile, but it feels like she's just making a big funny face. So she stops. “What were you running for?”
He shrugs, all the way up to his ears, a hugely exaggerated movement. “I dunno. I just like to run really fast. I didn't see you in the grass.”
She looks down and smiles, and it feels much more natural the second time. She doesn't even notice when it happens. “This grass is like, one hundredth of a millimeter.” It's really short, and she's wearing a purple shirt. The grass is yellow. She isn't even, like, disguised.
He looks at the ground under him. “Well, it's like, not that short, okay…” he looks embarrassed, his face red. A little guilty, she puts herself in his shoes.
“I probably woulda’ run into someone too, if I was running,” she claims, looking back at the sky. It's so deep blue it feels like it's almost night time.
She stares down at her hands, thinking about how the sun could possibly work if the sky was so dark.
She feels the boy staring at her, so she blinks back at him.
“My name is Brandon,” he grins, completely out of nowhere, holding out his hand as some sort of offer. She shakes it, but it's sweaty and covered in dirt so she lets go just as quickly. He brings it back to himself, rubbing the dirt against his jeans. All it does is get more dirt on them and smear it around.
“My name is Jessie. Jess.” She stares at his dirty hands for a little while longer, because he's still trying to wipe them off on his pants, and it's not doing much to help. “You should just wash them.”
He stares down at both of his hands, wiggling his fingers with a frown. “Probably, but that's a waste of recess. I'll go during class.”
She giggles and nods, “Good idea.”
As soon as the bell rings and they're back in class, Brandon raises his hand and asks to go to the bathroom. Jessie watches and waves him goodbye, and he waves back just as the door closes.
They end up becoming best friends. They do all sorts of group work together, and play with each other during recess every day. Every time they play house, Brandon insists on being the dog even when Jesse tells him she's the one who's supposed to. They end up just pretending to be dogs in the field and chasing one another around.
Jessie thinks he's awesome, funny, and he doesn't mind that she stares off thinking a lot of the time, or gets overwhelmed and acts like a jerk. He's really nice.
They even start having playdates outside of school, where Jessie will visit Brandon's house or vice versa, and they'll play video games together or ride their bikes around town. Brandon's mom makes really good food, so Jessie likes to go over to his house more than she likes for him to come over to hers. He doesn't seem to mind.
She's sure her parents don't like him, though, because one night she's heading to the bathroom after her bedtime and hears them discussing Brandon in their room like he's stupid and a bad influence, which he totally isn't. He's a really good draw-er, and he can do times tables, which Jessie can never remember. He also wears cool clothes, which makes her want some too. She's pretty certain that's what bad influence means.
(He has these awesome big sweatshirts with designs on them, and he'd let her wear one once when it was cold, which was nice. It was the most comfortable warm thing ever. She asked if she could get one for herself and her parents had said no. Which sucked. They ended up getting her this stupid plasticky rain jacket instead. It makes too much noise when she moves her arms so she never wears it. She thinks it was a waste.)
Jessie doesn't understand why they would think those things about him, and it hurts her feelings. She's barely ever had friends as close as him before, and he didn't even do anything wrong. He's, like, way more polite than she is, anyway.
As time passes, her parents like him even less, because his mom starts giving her his old clothes that don't fit him anymore. She doesn't really understand why her parents are so upset, because they could have just said no to the offer, but she guesses it was the absolutely desperate look on her face that got them to agree. Whatever. Her mom yelled at her about it later like it was her fault.
But she ends up getting really cool clothes from it, like actual big pants that don't rub against her legs, those big comfortable sweatshirts, and awesome T-shirts with things on them, ones that have superheroes, dinosaurs, and even Star Wars. Cool stuff. Stuff she really likes. Totally worth all the yelling.
Her parents barely even let her wear them outside, which is really dumb. She feels really cool when she wears them, especially with her dumb hair tucked all up in the hat he'd given her. (Her mom didn't know it was his because Jessie knew she would claim that he had lice and throw it away.) She felt like she could do anything in these clothes, like stand up really tall, or talk to new people she'd never tried talking to before, even if she was scared.
But no. Her parents insisted on pink shirts, cute pink shorts, cute purple shoes, and bows in her hair. Whatever to make her as uncomfortable as they could. She was sure that if she didn't hate those ugly clothes so much, they wouldn't force her to wear them. It was about making her as unhappy as possible.
That was the only way it could matter so much.
-
One morning, in the summer after 6th grade, after continuous and growing disdain over her appearance, Jessie calls Brandon on her home phone.
He picks up after 2 rings with a chirped, “Hey Jess!”
She stares at her feet on the floor, swallowing. She refuses to be a baby about this. It's fine. “Hey, I need you to do a favor for me. Can I, uh, come over pretty soon? Today?” She finds herself talking low, purposely deepening her voice to feel more confident over the phone. If Brandon notices he doesn't say anything.
He sounds excited when he says he has to go ask his mom, which he immediately leaves to do. The wait is long and Jessie can feel her pulse in her ears with the silence, which doesn't seem healthy. She bites her tongue and stands up taller in an effort to regulate her nervousness.
Her dad had said she could spend the night at Brandon's if she washed the pots and pans when she cleaned the kitchen, which she'd just finished with. She had nothing to do but wait.
There's a muffled sound as he steps up to the phone again. Jessie swallows a second time as the receiver makes a shuffling noise.
“She says you can stay over,” he's grinning over the line, clear in just his tone of voice. “She's going out with her friends today, though, so we'll be home alone all day,” He pauses, nervous, but continues again hastily, “Which is totally cool with me, by the way, we can totally party. But, like, if your parents are gonna get pissed…” He stops slowly, unsure. He was right, they'd get mad, but that doesn't mean she has to tell them his mom would be gone. If anything, it made her plan all the more spectacular.
Jessie smiles, “Yeah, yo, it's fine.” She's been trying to sound cooler recently by talking more casually, adding “yo’s” and even the occasional cuss word. She always gets embarrassed afterward, but it's a work in progress. Her parents hated it, which made the embarrassment worth it.
“Alright, cool, I–uh, show up whenever, man.”
Jessie grins, inexplicably joyful, and hangs up with an “Okay!”. Whenever Brandon refers to her as ‘man’ it makes her giddy.
She grabs her backpack and dumps out her blank worksheets from school. She hadn't opened the bag since the last day. She cringes at the brief reminder of starting middle school.
Careful to be as quiet as possible, she sneaks into the main bathroom and locks the door behind herself, backpack still in hand. She opens the cabinet underneath the sink as softly as possible and digs around gently until she finds what she's looking for: the clippers her dad uses to shave his head.
Grinning, she tucks them into her backpack, closes the cabinet, and flushes the toilet for good measure. She hops back across the hall into her room and shoves in her coolest clothes on top to hide any evidence. Her heart rate is on another level and she’s shaking, but at the same time, she's so excited that she feels like she's about to pass out.
A real, honest-to-god haircut. Wow. She's really gonna do it.
When she pulls up to Brandon's house on her bike, she feels like she's going to barf. She's going to look like such a dude with short hair. Just the thought of it makes her heart explode from excitement.
She rings the doorbell and rocks back and forth on the heels of her feet, biting her bottom lip. Brandon opens the door with a huge smile on his face. Before she can say anything, he pulls her in by her arm and shuts the door behind them.
“Hi! Do you want to see what I've been looking at? Look, dude.”
He jumps over to the big bulky computer his family keeps in the living room and shows her the screen.
On it were a bunch of pictures of honey badgers. He looks at the screen with blatant joy on his face, and then glances back up at Jessie, who doesn't really understand what's going on.
“Look! Isn't this the strangest little guy you've ever seen? They're, like, so cute. Look.” He points at another picture, and it's a little one baring its teeth at the camera. “I love them. I want to meet one. They're so… silly.”
Jessie looks at the screen and then back at him. “You kinda look like one, dude,” she states, an observation. “I'm gonna start calling you Badger,” she laughs, more joking than not.
He stares at her with his mouth wide open, and it almost seems like there are tears in his eyes. She feels guilty, until he starts talking. “No way! You know, Pete said I looked like one too.” Pete is this older kid who Brandon is sort-of neighbors with. Jesse thinks he's nice but they've never really gotten to interact. Apparently he smokes weed, but he's like 14, so Jesse thinks he just says that to seem cooler. Or he's insane. “If you actually called me Badger, in a cool code-name way, I would be really happy,” he says, completely earnest.
“You're such a nerd, dude,” she laughs.
“I'm serious! It would be cool!”
“I mean, yeah, alright.” The decision has been made, she guesses. Badger. It's a pretty silly name, especially for an 11 year old boy, but she would play along. It wasn't like she didn't think it was accurate.
Jesse grins down at him, before remembering the favor she'd asked him. “Oh, yeah! Okay, uh, basically…” She takes her backpack off of her shoulders and digs around in it, looking for the clippers she'd smuggled over. Brandon–or, wait, Badger–peers at her, curious, until she pulls them out triumphantly. “So, I want you to shave my head with these?” She offers them to him. “You don't have to. Uh, I'll do it myself, if you won't. But it's happening either way. Yo.”
He takes them and holds them, but still looks up at her. “You'll totally look like a guy,” he states, tilting his head. Non-judgmentally. He was imagining what she would look like, eyes wide.
“I know!” She beams under his thoughtful look.
“Okay, cool,” He hops up out of the chair, now staring at the clippers. “I have no idea how to use these, though…”
“Yeah, I don't either. We'll totally figure it out.”
She rushes over to the dining table and pulls out the tallest looking of the assorted chairs that surround it. She pulls it into the bathroom with minimum effort, cringing at the sound of the feet squeaking against the wood floor.
When she gets everything set up, she's pleased to see that they have a bathroom outlet. Badger follows behind her, a little lost, but still looking excited.
She plugs in the clippers and fiddles with the buttons and the attachments until it fits her needs. She decides on a half-inch attachment because she wants her hair to take forever to grow back. Her parents are never gonna let her get her hair cut again, so she's dedicated to making it last. She sits down.
She turns it on, and it buzzes to life, loud and sort of threatening.
“Okay,” she says, handing it to Badger, “Just like, scrape the sharp part against my head. I think.”
He tries, but all it does is get stuck up in her long hair and scare the shit out of both of them.
A little bit of pulling has to be done to get everything untangled. They turn off the machine and get to thinking. How the hell were they actually supposed to use it?
Badger stares down at her hair, blinking. “Oh wait, I've got an idea. Check it.” He rushes out of the room and Jessie sits there, waiting for him. She hears him looking for something frantically in his room.
He shouts “got it!” from beyond the wall. He's found what he's looking for, apparently, because he's back in the bathroom not a moment later. He's got a pair of scissors in his hand.
“So basically, I'm gonna cut off all the long stuff first so the thing doesn't get stuck all up in it, yeah?” He looks very pleased with his idea. Jessie is too, because the quicker her hair is off the better.
“Yeah! Alright. Do it.” She settles down in the chair as he gets to work.
The feeling of the dull scissors against her hair is one that she wouldn’t force upon her worst enemy. Badger is careful, and she can tell he's trying his best to be as gentle as he can be, but he's heavy handed and it's obvious from the way she can feel every single hair tearing off of her scalp unpleasantly. She sits and grits her teeth, because she is dedicated to this. She will leave this house with a shaved head no matter what.
Finally, he pulls away the scissors with a huge smile on his face. “It's going fantastically so far, really,” he nods. “I'm like an evil scientist, but I don't have potions. Or weird experiments. Instead, I have haircutting abilities!” He pauses, “So, I'm more like an evil hair-cutter.”
She looks at him. “Hairdresser.”
“Right, yeah. I knew that.” He goes to grab the clippers, and when he turns them on, Jessie can't help but flinch. It's a scary noise, okay?
Badger laughs. Maybe he was evil.
Jessie is facing away from the mirror, positioned so the clippers can be used without unplugging from the wall. She has to fight the urge to turn around completely to see the shorter version of her hair. She's so excited for the final result.
“So,” Badger says, conversationally, as he starts to drag the clippers against her scalp. “Why do you want to cut your hair? I think it's pretty.” He's careful to avoid eye contact as he speaks, and the tips of his ears turn a little red.
She glares at him briefly.
He backtracks. “Well, I mean, I'll like the bald-Jess too. You're pretty no matter the haircut. But half of being a girl is long hair!” He really is a little clueless. He looks embarrassed and a little confused. Not judgemental, just lost.
“Yeah, exactly.” She doesn't go into why because she doesn't want to, or know how to. She doesn't know what to do except totally ignore the compliment because it makes her feel all squirmy inside.
He falls quiet, thoughtful.
Finally, he seems to accept it, with a soft, “Cool.” He looks like he means it. It makes her face warm.
Tufts fall from her head, and as itchy as it feels, she's tremendously pleased. She smiles down, looking at her lap and the short clumps of hair strewn across it. Her head feels lighter than it's ever been. It's fantastic.
Badger moves to stand in front of her to shave off the last remaining inch or so of her bangs. She glances up at him without thinking, and he sticks his tongue out at her.
“Don't move!” He scolds, holding her face still with his hand. “I'm almost done, anyway.”
“Sorry. It's hard.” She feels the urge to jump up and get away from this whole thing, to stretch out every muscle she's been carefully holding still. Instead, she squeezes her eyes shut as hair tumbles down her face like a waterfall, scrunching every single one of her features up in concentration.
After what feels like 10 hours, Badger finally stands back and turns the buzzing thing off, a huge smile on his face.
“I'm done!” He crosses his arms and tilts his head. “It looks totally awesome.”
Jessie launches up out of her seat and scrabbles around to the mirror. Staring at her is exactly what she expected–a buzzcut. But really being able to see it, all spiky, uneven, and dirty blond: it's masculine. Looking at it makes her feel some monumental emotion, something enormous, happy, foreign. There's such a giant pass-out worthy relief that she immediately starts to tear up. Her arms are literally shaking as she touches it, scratching at the scalp, petting it back. It sticks right back up. A few hot tears fall and she wipes them away quickly.
This is exactly what she needed.
The question is, now, why does she feel like this? No girl she's ever met has been so happy about being seen as a boy. Being a boy. They all like wearing the cute little outfits they get at The Gap. It seems crazy, really, to her: how could you enjoy being that way? With everyone seeing you as a girl? They must be lying, or pretending, because who could give up the opportunity for this feeling? The feeling of being so wonderfully boyish?
Jessie stares at Badger through the mirror. “This is really, really, really great. Thank you, um,” she feels awkward, becuase he's standing there, looking concerned and confused, and her face is blotchy red and shiny, covered in tears.
He takes a step closer, biting at his bottom lip. “I really think it looks good, you don't have to be sad, Jess.”
“I'm not,” she smiles, and more tears escape her eyes. She feels like they're burning her and she rapidly wipes them away. “It's, like, perfect. Really.” She turns around to face him.
He looks doubtful, and they end up just staring at each other. She glances down at the floor for a split second, and suddenly she's being hugged. Hard.
She laughs and scrabbles to escape but he squeezes her as tight as possible. She can barely breathe, much less move. Eventually she caves in and hugs him back. It's a really great hug. He's always been good at it, and she bets he will remain that way. He's great at the affection thing.
Eventually, they part, and he smiles at her, all big. His face is red and his hair is all up in his eyes. She's totally and completely out of breath. But they're both happy.
Cleaning up sucks, because cleaning anything sucks. Sweeping is a bitch, and she doesn't even know why she insisted on being the one to do it, because Badger had grabbed the broom and everything before she took it from him. So much for being a good guest.
She finds that, throughout the night, she can't stop touching her hair. She remembers each time that her parents are going to legitimately crucify her for this distinct act of rebellion, but the overwhelming euphoria she gets from each scratch of her scalp blocks all fear out.
She totally fits in with Badger now. They match, not hair-wise (because, jeez, does the guy need a haircut. He's got floppy curls all over the place), but more… energy-wise. It's hard for her to even understand. She can't help but forget that she is, technically, a girl. She fits in with Badger more because, now, she feels as if they're just two guys.
At 11PM, after her makeshift bed is made on his floor and they've said their goodnights, she stares at the ceiling, in deep thought.
No normal girl thinks of herself as a guy. What happened, to make her this way? Did she have a bad childhood? Was it her own fault? Was it in her blood? Did she have a mental disorder?
She doesn't sleep very well.
In the morning, her mom calls Badger’s home phone, requesting she come home to help with household chores. He hugs her goodbye, and wishes her luck with them about her hair, because he knows they're hardasses about the way she looks. She just sniffs and nods at him.
The bike ride is nice, from a scenic viewpoint. She thinks about the situation she's in the whole time, though.
What was she supposed to tell her parents? ‘Yeah, actually, I think there's something wrong with me mentally: I've convinced myself I'm a boy!’? Or, 'I would like to live a life where everyone spells my name J-E-S-S-E and says he and him when talking about me; and we'll all just forget the first 12 years of my life! Capiche?’ Some sort of combination between the two?
Either way, they're kicking her out and never speaking to her again. Hell, they might even do that just because she cut her hair. At this point, what's it even matter? Being herself is a no-go in their book no matter what. She considers just going back to Badger’s and never facing them again.
Just as expected, when she walks into the house, they yell.
They grab her by the shoulders and threaten violence.
They decide she's not allowed to see her friends for the rest of the summer.
They scream that they're going to send her to live with her aunt, a threat they've held over her head before.
They tell her people are going to think she's a “dyke”, or even a “tranny”. She doesn't know what these words mean. She isn't sure if she wants to learn.
The argument ends with her being sent to her room. She locks her door behind herself and paces frantically, unsure what to do. She'd pull at her hair, but it isn't there. Minuscule relief. Good thing they can't glue it back on, or anything. Oh, God, what if they glue hair onto her head?
She ends up calling Badger, who picks up immediately. She talks as clearly as she can through her crying, and he's silent. Mad, probably. She'd told him that they're not allowed to hang out for the rest of the summer. The realization of that was the cherry on top of all the other sadness she'd accumulated over the morning. Badger wishes her luck with her parents, and they end the call with a simultaneous “See you at school.”
Slowly, she drags herself to her desktop computer, the one that her parents let her keep in her room after they got a new one. It's really old and she really only uses it for playing minesweeper, because she has no interest in school and she doesn't know how to download games online.
Instead, this time, she opens Google, and searches: feeling like a boy when your a girl.
Immediately, she's given many big words and scientific terms. Things she has no idea how to begin understanding. “Gender dysphoria”? “Transgenderism”? “Non-Binary”? “Gender identity”? “HRT”?
It's a lot, and her reading isn't very good. She has to look up one word at a time. Slowly, she reads through different articles, scientific studies, Yahoo Answers, and whatever other information she can get her hands on. Apparently other kids are like this too–and there are, like, medications and surgeries that turn you into how you want to look. It's a whole thing. Being transgender. Jessie feels like she's going to throw up.
Quickly, she opens a Word document, just a test. She types, slow as ever,
hi im jesse.
mom: hi jesse how was school. i love you son.
he's so cool jesse jesse ejsse… he's the coolest guy in abq yo!!!!!!!
Dear god. Jesse.
He couldn't help but shove his face into the crook of his elbow and delete the tab off of his computer. It felt too embarrassing. There was absolutely no question, though, how much this resonated. It actually hurt, deep in his core, the feeling of belonging and understanding. He knew exactly how these confused strangers online felt as they posted about how they didn't understand themselves or their bodies.
Jesse. Awesome name. So much better than Jessica. He couldn't help but sit there and spell it in his head over and over again. J-E-S-S-E. J-E-S-S-E. J-E-S-S-E.
His parents were totally going to disown him for this. He hoped Badger would still like him. Somehow, he doubted it would matter too much.
As he fell asleep, instead of counting sheep, he spelled his name.
J-E-S-S-E. J-E-S-S-E. J-E-S-S-E.