Work Text:
I remember wearing my mom's high heels
And these pink work-out sweatpants
Yeah, I was a little kid
Who didn't know to hide it
I remember hatin' all my clothes
And seeing pretty girls with pretty clothes
And I was envious
How can I be one of those?
- Excerpt from Blue Foster's song, "IDK If I’m a Boy," lyrics here.
✦✦
Dennis was eight years old when he convinced Dee to let him borrow her pants for gym class.
They were in the third grade, in the same class, and while Dee had a few friends, Dennis often found himself alone. He liked to tag along with Dee, clinging to her side and relying on her for support. He hadn’t yet realized she was just his sister, not his friend.
Dee owned a lot of sparkly clothes and a lot of colorful clothes. Dennis didn’t own any of either. He’d asked his mom, once, if he could get clothes more like Dee’s. His mom had bent down so her face was level with his, her hands on his shoulders. She’d said to him, cryptically, “That’s not the world we live in, baby.” Dennis hadn’t understood then and he still didn’t.
One item of Dee’s clothing Dennis had always envied were her pink pants for gym class. All he had to wear for gym were his navy blue soccer shorts. They went all the way down his thighs to his knees. He hated them. His complaints about them didn’t seem to register for Dee like Dennis had assumed they would.
“I like your shorts. They look easy to run in,” Dee said. They were walking to the gym in the line up with their class, two-by-two. They were supposed to be silent, but if they whispered that was ok.
Dennis frowned. He didn’t care about running; he didn’t like the boring dark color of the shorts, nor the feeling of the thick elastic waistband. He said, “We could switch, if you want?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wondered how he’d never thought to say them before.
Dee considered. She pulled Dennis to the side before they got to where girls and boys were filing into their separate changing rooms, and pulled her pink sweatpants out of her gym bag. “Gimme your shorts,” she said. Dennis handed them over, and the exchange was complete. Dennis hugged the pink pants to his chest as he walked into the boys’ change room, heart thumping happily in his chest.
The pink sweatpants were a very pretty color, like dewy spring flowers. The material was soft to his fingers, not like the scratchy material of the soccer shorts. The pink pants had butterflies embroidered over the pockets, and a drawstring waistband.
While all the other boys in his class put on their blues and their blacks, Dennis happily pulled on the pink pants and tied the drawstring into a bow. The pants fit him perfectly — he and Dee were still almost the same height, although people kept telling Dennis that soon he would be taller than her. The comment always made his insides feel tight.
He swapped his t-shirt to his looser gym shirt, and exited the changeroom into the gymnasium. He saw Dee across the gym, running sprints from one end of the gym to the other with her friend Rachel. They were both laughing. Dee seemed happy in Dennis’s shorts, with her shirt twisted at the bottom and tucked in.
Unlike Dee, Dennis wasn’t a fan of gym class. He didn’t like getting sweaty and then having to go back to school, or having to kick a ball, or — worst of all — having any sort of projectile thrown or kicked towards him.
He moved to the center of the gym to await instructions from their teacher. He sat down on the wooden ground, legs crossed under himself, and waited. Kids ran and laughed around him. He wished he was back at home. He wished he was better at making friends.
Dennis ran his palms along the soft material of the sweatpants. When he thought about how he was wearing them, how he finally was wearing something colorful and pretty, he could almost be happy to be in gym class.
The teacher blew her whistle and called everyone to the middle of the gym. Dennis stood as everyone crowded around him. The teacher gave the instructions: they were going to be playing a few soccer scrimmages. She started dividing the class into groups of seven, which would be their teams.
Dennis hated soccer. He stood still, like maybe if he stood still enough the teacher would forget he was there, and he could slip away unnoticed. He imagined himself in his bed with Mr. Tibbs beside him and his notebook open in front of him, marking in Dee’s dossier that she, for some unfathomable reason, likes his gym shorts more than her own pink pants.
Dennis was snapped out of his daydream by Cody, one of his least favorite classmates, pointing a finger at him. Dennis looked from Cody to the teacher, trying to figure out why he had become the center of attention.
“I don’t want to be with him!” Cody whined, still pointing at Dennis. Dennis wanted to push him over. “He’s wearing girl pants!”
It took Dennis a second to register the words. When he had, his heart rate spiked. He wondered if this, finally, was what his mother had tried to warn him about. He tried to defend himself, but couldn't quite find the words. “They’re not… I— Shut up, Cody!”
“Language, Dennis,” the teacher said.
Cody continued: “I bet he can’t even kick the ball, Miss. It’s not fair. My dad said he doesn’t wanna raise no sissy boy and I don’t wanna be on a team with one either!”
Dennis flinched at the word. He could feel Dee’s eyes on him, wide with worry, but hers weren’t the only eyes on him. He felt like he was under a microscope, like in the science demonstration they’d been shown a week prior. He was just like one of the tiny organisms bobbing around on the screen, unable to escape, magnified big so everyone could see all their flaws.
A few minutes ago, Dennis hadn’t known he’d had any flaws. With Cody’s fat finger still pointed at him, Dennis felt like nothing but a flaw: he'd been identified as something wrong, something other. The thing that had made him happy was also, apparently, the thing that painted a neon freak sign over his head.
In a fleeting moment of anger, Dennis did what he could only assume any of those magnified organisms would do if they had the brainpower: he lunged at the thing that had put him in that position. He tackled Cody, using surprise to take him down. Cody landed square on his back, his breath knocked out of him.
Dennis, victorious, took a second too long to get up. Cody recovered, and once the element of surprise was gone, easily overpowered Dennis. He flipped them so Dennis was on his back, then slapped Dennis across the face. Dennis cried out. His nose felt hot, and something warm trickled down to his lip.
One of the girls screamed, and then Cody was pulled off of him. The teacher’s voice led all the kids out of the gym, but Dennis stayed behind, dazed and in pain. The floor, at the very least, was solid and cool under his back.
Dee was the only one who stayed behind to help him. She kneeled at his side and brushed his hair off of his forehead.
“Are you ok?” She whispered, her eyes peering at him intently.
Dennis wanted to tell her that obviously he was ok. He could easily take that and more, and the pink pants he was wearing did nothing to change that. He couldn’t seem to make his lips or his tongue work. He closed his eyes, fighting tears he hadn’t asked for.
Dee squeezed his shoulder. “It’s alright, Dennis,” she said, still quiet. “Mrs. Tracy will be back soon. It’ll be ok.”
Dennis didn’t care about Mrs. Tracy. He wasn’t upset, and if he was, he definitely wasn’t upset about the pain or that his nose was maybe-probably bleeding. He was upset because Cody had been right, and Dennis knew it.
He’d learned about the real world that day. He’d learned he hadn’t been made for it. The pink pants had been all he’d ever wanted, and he was never going to be able to wear them again.
✦✦
Dennis was fifteen years old and he was on top of the world. At school, everyone worshiped him. He had his army of minions, ready to answer his every request. He was a god. He was only in sophomore year, but already he had seniors trembling when he approached.
He was untouchable. He was the envy of the school. He was…
He wasn’t happy. He was never happy. His clothes were boys’ clothes and they were boxy and monotone and unflattering. He hated them. He hated everything about them.
At fifteen, Dennis knew all too well why his mother hadn’t wanted him to wear girls’ clothes as a child. She hadn’t wanted him to grow up to be a reject or a freak. He knew the only thing that awaited him if he wore what he wanted to was pain and humiliation.
But locked in his mother's room while both his parents were away, there was no such thing as a loser or a freak or humiliation. There was only Dennis, alone, and all his mother’s expensive, beautiful clothes at his fingertips.
Dennis had his mother’s walk-in closet doors thrown open, and he had laid the most beautiful dresses out carefully across the crisp white sheet of her bed. He could have gone to Dee’s closet instead, but Dee was more likely to show up at any moment: it was Monday. Technically, they were both supposed to be at school, but Dennis had his minions covering for him and Dee had no qualms about leaving part-way through the day if she felt more like getting drunk than attending classes.
Mac, Dennis’s idiot friend and amateur weed dealer, was equally down to skip class. He was currently, Dennis hoped, still sitting outside Dennis’s mother’s bedroom, waiting for Dennis to ‘find the hard liquor’. Dennis wasn’t sure why he’d invited Mac over, or why he got butterflies when Mac smiled at him. He didn’t want to think too hard about it. He had enough to repress already.
Dee’s closet had teenage girl clothes, and although Dennis had spent many days angry he couldn’t wear her patterned tank tops and high-rise flared jeans, he was the most envious of his mother’s expensive, delicate dresses. He hardly ever got the chance to get close to them, his mother overprotective. But she was away now, and Dennis had free reign.
Even just looking at them, his fingers tingled with an excitement that felt very close to fear. He lifted a white dress with watercolor flowers printed over it. The material was cool in his hands, so light it hardly felt like he was holding anything. He held it up to himself in the mirror. It almost looked like he could have been wearing it.
Dennis swallowed a lump in his throat, and tried to imagine wearing the dress. He couldn’t manage to do it without also imagining Cody from third grade, or any of the boys like him who had come after, yelling in his face.
But he wanted to wear the dress. He wanted to so badly his chest hurt.
Dennis could have yelled in frustration. He hadn’t asked to be unhappy with his boys’ clothes. He hadn’t wanted to feel uncomfortable and sad everyday, stuck in his masculine button-up shirts and shapeless boxy pants. He hadn’t wanted to hate the way he looked in the mirror.
He hadn’t wanted to be so abnormal. He hadn’t chosen this. He didn’t know why he was the way he was. He didn’t know!
He’d been stupid to think this would work. He couldn’t do it, and he was just a little bit glad for that. He didn’t know how he’d even have been able to take the dress off again if he had gotten it on. He never would have wanted to trade it back for his pants.
He didn’t want to know how good it would have felt on. He didn’t want the reminder of all he couldn’t have. This had been a mistake.
Dennis carefully hung all the dresses back up, fingers shaking. He felt their soft fabrics, and ghosted his fingers over their delicate clasps and little buttons. He let their flowy skirts float against his thighs as he walked them back to the closet.
In that moment he hated his sister and his mother for the way they were able to wear clothes like this with no shame. His stomach burnt with hatred. He tried to direct it all towards them, but most of it was for himself, burning himself alive from the inside out.
Dennis wasn’t strong enough to wear any of the dresses, but he also wasn’t strong enough to forget pretty, feminine clothes altogether. Before he left his mother’s room, Dennis snagged a thin, blush-colored scarf from a hook on his mother’s wall. He looped it around his neck once, letting the end pieces lay over his chest.
He ignored the mirror and opened the door, telling himself that men wore scarves, and the color of this one suited his complexion. He tried to ignore how the scarf, with its soft fabric and pretty color, made him hate his plaid shirt even more.
Mac, surprisingly, had managed to stay sitting the entire time Dennis had been away. He stood when he saw Dennis, eyes immediately going to the scarf. Dennis’s shoulders tensed. He prepared himself to convince Mac it was a men’s scarf, or that he’d put it on believing so, at least.
But Mac didn’t comment on it. Instead, he licked his lips then said, “Did ya’ get the booze?”
Dennis, still tense, said, “No. She must have moved it. Let's go check in the kitchen.”
Mac nodded. He interlaced their elbows; Mac had always been touchy. He was touchy with everyone, and had been even more so before a kid called him a fag in the parking lot after school. After that, he’d mostly stopped touching Dennis at all except for when they were alone.
Dennis would never say it, but he’d missed the touching. He walked elbow-in-elbow with Mac down the stairs. They didn’t talk; Dennis’s tongue was heavy in his mouth. He had butterflies again. Mac’s warm body beside his both pulled him in and repulsed him.
When they got downstairs and he’d separated himself from Mac, Dennis was finally able to say, “Let’s get drunk.” Mac nodded enthusiastically. Dennis couldn’t wait for his head to spin with alcohol. He didn’t want to think any more about which clothes he wanted to wear or whose hand he wanted to hold.
He wasn’t a freak when he was drunk. When he was drunk, he was a god.