As a little girl i loved festivals
the rides, the food, the people
special memories of all the fun we had
like this one time
still in my itchy sunday best
we went to the carnival
and my daddy bought me a candied apple
and I saw a new ride, the house of mirrors
and so me and daddy, we went into the house of mirrors
but it was more like a maze than a house
and we went through the gates
and we heard the music play
and we saw these people, people I thought were people
and they were boys dressed like girls and girls dressed like boys,
and people who weren't girls or boys or boys or girls
and they were colorful and happy and beautiful
and i said
"daddy, look, aren't they pretty ?"
and my daddy said
"no. they're disgusting and they're all going to HELL!"
and I said "oh"
and I bit my candied apple
and a worm wiggled at me
and I screamed
and that's how I learned the difference between good and evil
I used to fantasize a lot
I'd have imaginary friends
I claimed I could see them
Dream up dream sharing machines with friends
And I never really did get over that.
One thing that I always took for granted in those fantasies:
I was a girl
My imaginary friends were girls
When I played video games I was a girl
When I read books I was a girl
When I imagined myself as a superhero, I was a girl
And later, when I imagined myself hugging and kissing and loving and fucking, I was a girl
There's a scene I remember, one I kept revisiting for a long time.
The world has ended, a bunch of people have powers now
And I'm a demon girl
Like it's just, a thing that happens,
Boom, the world is over, boom, you're a demon girl.
I never questioned that. Not for a long long time.
But she ran around that head of mine
that confident, sexy, demonic girl version of me
living in a post-apocalyptic hellscape
and I never told anyone, but somehow the other kids knew
they'd sing "Lola" at me and call me a faggot
I didn't allow myself to make the connection
I would have given anything to switch places with her
sold my soul and gone to hell
I'm not mentally stable
and I don't know how much that's me, and how much that's other people
but I've held some weird delusions over the years
thinking my life was a sitcom
thinking i'd solved religion
thinking that everyone hated me
thinking that we'd all died and gone to hell
you know, stuff like that
but sometimes those can be helpful
like when I first figured out I was queer
I was severely transphobic
the fact that I might be one of those…
…
…those things
it was
disgusting
terrifying
wrong
One of the first thoughts I had was that I wanted to D I E
and you know, obviously I didn't
I don't think
But I didn't tell anyone
because of the shame or whatever
And I couldn't stay as I was
my brain kept screaming at me
I tried to seek out therapy
but it was months
and months
and months
and months
and months
and so I was like
FINE
and I started on hormones
but I was a student
I didn't have any money and that stuff was pricy
and I couldn't tell anyone
because of the shame or whatever
so yeah, I stole some money
I snuck off from home to the clinic
injected myself with hormones
and felt like shit every time
it was wrong
i was doing a wrong thing
i was lying, i was stealing,
i was knowingly hurting loved ones
and that's not the delusion, that's just, like, what I was taught
i was doing bad things and i should feel bad.
but like, I HAD to do it
I'd die if I didn't
I decided that if I was going to be a bad person I should just revel in it
every condemnation became praise
every slur a badge of honor
my stupid brain would tell me i was going to HELL for what I've done
and I'd just laugh and laugh and say
"I sure hope so!"
I went to my first pride recently
I've been out as transgender for years
it's not anything difficult or new
I just hadn't gone to one yet
But so I have this friend
if you can call her a friend
she dragged me down to the festival this year
and boy was it hot
So there we were in the wet heat
using our gay little fans, drinking our gay little drinks
waiting in this interminably long line for tickets
and it wasn't loud yet, not out there. If anything it was dead quiet
except for this one guy
off to the side standing on a little stage
cops stood between him and the line
and he's all like
"Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished!"
you know, all "you faggots are going to hell!" or whatever
I'd heard it a million times, the rest of the line had too
the dude's little church had preachers all around the perimeter
And I guess we all just ignored it
but then we went through the gates
and I heard the music playing
and saw all the people able to be themselves
and it felt like home.
