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*illi$@ %&$@!& McMillin
You’re about twelve when you first notice hair in your armpits and legs.
You’re about twelve when your aunt tells you your voice is getting deeper.
You’re about twelve when you start going wrong.
Your parents think you’ve got the stomach flu, you try to ride it out, but it doesn’t go away- now you smell like bile and stomach acids as you walk around your middle school’s campus. A scent you can taste any time you try to speak. Now you're not just getting picked on for being friends with the long-hair-having “gay boy” Raymond, you’re getting picked on 'cause your breath smells like vomit.
You’ve got no way to prove it, but you think the infection has spread to your face. It’s so bizarre, your mornings are fine until you get to the bathroom, and you start to brush your teeth, and you look up at yourself, and suddenly, it’s all wrong. A stress so all-encompassing it turns your stomach.
You recount your mornings to the doctor, and he recommends you see a therapist. This is much preferred to the probability of you having cancer, so despite it being 1999, and despite you living in the most stifling town in New Jersey, your parents take it in stride.
But your therapy doesn’t go well, your therapist is a close-minded idiot who thinks you’re just trying to get out of going to school. A cloud overtakes you, and the color of childhood and a life well-loved and well-lived drains away.
You see how ever many doctors, therapists, psychiatrists, specialists it takes, getting worse and worse. In the summer of 2001, after years of trying, you finally meet a therapist who isn’t the worst. Granted, you have to cross over this bridge and go into the city to see him, but it’s worth it. You tell him about school and about your friends and bullies, and your dear sweet brother. And your body, the hair, the voice, the way you didn’t feel good before, but you feel worse now, like something is wrong.
This therapist asks you how you feel about being a boy.
You don’t feel good.
There, that’s it.
You don't feel like a boy at all.
But see, you’re already a laughing-stock.
You’re already friends with a “gay” kid, and thus gay by proxy. You already like freaky movies, you play the flute, you’re failing your math class, so you’re an idiot too, you smell awful, and your hair’s so thin you look bald, for Christ’s sake. You really don’t need another blunder. You need to stop seeing this therapist before he gets any more ideas about how much weirder you can be.
A way out comes in the form of a national tragedy; your parents are never going to willingly drive you to a high-rise in the city ever again.
Good morning, September; good morning, ninth grade.
And good night.
It was a blur, really. All you know is you didn’t really shower much, something about seeing yourself, and you didn’t make any new friends, only really lost a few. And, of course, you totally failed math and science. But that’s okay! The year is over, it’s summer, you survived your first year of high school, and the only incidents of note were you getting stuffed into lockers.
Good morning, tenth grade!
And good evening, too.
Great, really great. Your brother’s finally in high school with you; he’s always been more of a charmer, so he’s obviously doing great, but he makes time for you, and you spend your lunches together, go you! Your own built-in best friend till the end!
Come May, horrible, terrible, testy May. You’ve given up on math, but you’d almost gotten a passing grade on science; the end is near if only you could cram enough to actually pass.
No. Too dense, your skull, I mean. What’s the point? You’re some freak who can’t count, doesn’t understand science, and most pressingly, you’re a boy-girl mess. The pressure builds up and you think, suddenly, like you might burst out of your skin, like the rising surface of a loaf of bread. How do you prevent this, the tearing?
You’re not a loaf of rising bread. You’re a human person whose insides were meant to be kept inside. Terribly sorry you had to see that, Elliot. But it’s summer now, and you’re away in some psychiatric hospital getting treated for your rather pressing depression.
Let’s take this opportunity to open the box of Unmentionables. Let’s see, an embarrassing memory of nearly drowning in PE last year, another of falling over your own feet, also from PE, what else, oh yeah. Yeah, remember therapy? Let’s talk about what you learned in therapy.
What do you know about yourself? You love Dungeons and Dragons, you’d play it more if only you could find people to play it with. You’ve been a die-hard fan of Audrey Hepburn longer than you’d ever admit. You’ve been a monthly subscriber to Fangoria even longer. You think Harry Houdini’s the coolest guy around; his tricks are spectacular. Of all sports to play, you chose croquet, and of all instruments, that's the one you chose? The phallus?
A kid like you was never going to make it through life unnoticed. But who says that’s what you have to want? Maybe you’re allowed to want anything else.
There are plenty of people who like that. Your parents adore you; no amount of poor grades or social blunders can sway them. Your brother can control an entire room and prefers to spend his time with you. Moni is your ride-or-die; you’re bonded now, set into stone. Who could want more?
The one thing that's clear is you've tried to hide. This attempt has ended with you locked away for an entire summer, your friends and family only being allowed to see you at set hours of the day. You pushed yourself to the brink and sprang back with a bum left arm and scars down both. If weird can award you life, then weird is what you'll be. It should have always been that simple.