Page 41 of Best Woman
“Oh my god,” I gasp. “I forgot to reschedule it. Everett, I’msosorry, I can call the construction company now and—”
“I’ve already done that,” he says, “after I spent half an hour talking her down, a half an hour she spent naming no less than fifteen other designers who would be more than happy to take over the project if I was no longerup to the task.”
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
“Everett, I can’t even begin to—”
“No, you really can’t.” He takes a deep sigh. “Look, I know you’re technically out of office this week, but I told you to let me know if you needed me to handle this while you were away and you didn’t, then you just dropped the ball—almost literally, because there was anactual fucking wrecking ballinvolved!”
“I know, I screwed up, I’ve been so busy and overwhelmed. Do you want me to email Mrs. Schwartz?”
“What I want you to do is take the weekend to assess if you really want to be doing this work.”
“Everett, of course I do!”
“Because it isn’t just this, Julia. It’s one thing for you to roll your eyes when I ask you to pick up my new harness from Purple Passion, but youtold meyou wanted more responsibility, that you wanted to be a real designer, but I’m just not seeing it.”
Hot tears spring into my eyes and I fight to hold them back. Through the glass doors Mom gives me an annoyed look, gesturing for me to come back inside. Beside her, Kim glares, looking back at me with sympathy.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, though this time I’m not sure who I’m apologizing to, or what for.
Everett sighs again. “Look, I don’t want to ruin your weekend. Have fun at the wedding, and we’ll talk when you’re back.”
“Everything OK?” Kim asks when I’m back inside.
“It’s fine,” I say. She looks like she wants to say more, but instead squeezes my hand in one of hers and shoots another glare at my mom. I should say something, but my stomach hurts and my heart is pounding and my feet are aching in Hannah G’s stupid fucking shoes.
In the back seat of Randy’s car on the way to the rehearsal dinner I compose an email for Everett and an explanation forKim, swiping back and forth between the two. It’s always been easier for me to write down what I want to say in a stressful situation, helps me get my thoughts in order. It’s not working, so I open my speech for the reception tomorrow, which is more of a bulleted list of childhood stories carefully selected to embarrass Aiden on his big day, my duty as the older sister.
But the closer we get to the dinner, the more dread chokes me. Every second is bringing me closer to walking into a room full of people who have known me my entire life. People who were there when I was born and graduated from high school, people who had my Little League pictures stuck on their refrigerators with magnets. People who sent me checks for my bar mitzvah made out to a name that’s not mine and never was.
And they know, of course, what my name is now, and what pronouns they should be using. Some of them have seen me over dinner when they were visiting New York, or just a few nights ago at the bar where I saw more of Rachel’s vagina than anyone but Aiden and her gynecologist should ever see. Many of them received the email I sent out three and a half years ago, in which I explained that I was a woman whose name was Julia and linked out to several helpful resources for families of trans people. I received many sweet responses to that email and even some surprising ones. (My cousin David told me his best friend from college had transitioned a few years ago—although healsoassumed wekneweach other, as if all trans people are part of some secret underground network through which we share hormones and talk shit about how problematic and dangerousSilence of the Lambsis.) (I fucking loveSilence of the Lambs!) (I also loveMrs. Doubtfire.)
But there is a difference between knowing andseeing,andespecially seeing incontext. My close friends have been with me through my transition, but the way my life has worked out over the past couple of years is that for the most part, the people I engage with on a day-to-day basis are people who have only ever known me as Julia. They might have been there for that horrible first year when I was still growing out my hair and figuring out how to use makeup, how often I needed to shave, and the right way to keep my head down on the train so no one bothered me, but they implicitly understand that I am…this. Me. Even my New York friends who knew mebeforehad only known me for a few years, and in those few years, I was a slutty bisexual demon who spent my weekends dancing with almost no rhythm in dive bars and abandoned warehouses with glitter on my cheeks and clothing that grew increasingly androgynous.
But the people at this rehearsal dinner tonight knew me when I was a little boy, or at least when I thought I was supposed to be one, when I wastoldI was supposed to be one, and I can’t help but be terrified that’s all they’re going to see, a little boy playing dress-up in someone else’s clothing. Because, if I’m being honest, there are still plenty of days when I look in the mirror and that’s allIsee.
I could blame that on the obvious things, like my fivehead or my shoulders or the fact that I have to shave my face every few days and my breasts are still kind of pointy rather than full and rounded—I’ll never have the dirty pillows Carrie White’s mom murdered her over. But those things are the most boring things to feel bad about as a trans woman, and after a few years of living in this cyborg body, I’m kind of sick of being bothered by them. More than anything, I just fundamentally still feel like the same person I wasbeforeI worried about them, and I’mterrified at how quickly I became a quieter, angrier,lesserversion of myself as soon as my plane touched down on Floridian soil. Or, the ultimate horror, I’ve been that version of myself all along.
That’s the lie of transition, of congestible politics and born-in-the-wrong-body rhetoric: there is not abeforeand anafter. I came here hoping to make some triumphant debut to my family, floating in like a butterfly and banishing any memory of the awkward little boy who used to race around their houses trying to find the afikomen at Passover. But to have that experience, I’d have to believe that in transitioning I havetransformed…and I don’t. I was not a boy who felt wrong his whole life and then, through a combination of hormones and hair removal, became a girl. I am a girl who was told she was a boy and didn’t have any way to dispute that, tried her best to make that work for a couple of decades, wasreallybad at it, and decided to stop pretending. I’m just a person who used to show up in the world in one way that didn’t work for me and made me fucking depressed and checked out of my own life but couldn’t figure out or didn’t want to admit why, and once I finally did, there was no going back. So I transitioned.
And now I’m still that person, only I have pointy little boobs and long hair and a closet full of, let’s admit it,stolendesigner dresses and a different name, and all those things might seem trivial to someone else, but they make me feel like I can exist in this world in a way that’s not necessarily easier, but at least more fucking honest.
My whole childhood was spent wearing a Halloween costume I wasn’t allowed to take off. But I wasn’tmiserable. I didn’t grow up wishing I’d been born with different chromosomes becausefor the most part, I didn’t understand how to put what I was feeling into words. Just call me Julia and keep it pushing!
None of this makes sense, even in my head. Or maybe it makes too much sense. Transness is nothing if not a series of contradictions, bending oneself into a living question mark, a riddle, your very own puzzle that no one—least of all yourself—knows how to solve.
I watch my mom in the front seat, my beautiful mother with her immaculate manicure and long golden hair, and despite how annoyed I was at her earlier today a rush of gratitude fills me now. She might make me want to scream and sulk when she tells me I should never leave the house without a bra, but I know it’s her way of acknowledging my womanhood. She’s relating to me as a woman the only way she knows how, by being an annoying mother telling her daughter to sit up straight and wear some mascara, the same wayhermom did with her.
I am so incredibly lucky to have a family that’s listened to me, learned with me, tried to do right by me and the choices I’ve made about my life. That’s why I feel so guilty for the lies I’ve told Kim—and I can’t keep writing them off as omission or manipulation, I’ve had plenty of chances to course correct and haven’t done it. If I’m being honest, this has long since gone past some stupid scheme to fuck my dream girl. I like her, Ireallylike her, and I’m too deep into my lies to be honest with her without creating the kind of scene that would make this week even more about me and my insecurities than it already is.
Because that’s the reality I have to get through my thick skull with its prominent,masculineforehead ridge: this wedding isn’t about me. No one is out to make me uncomfortable orunwelcome or embarrassed. This is my family, who accepted me with open, if somewhat limp, arms.Iam the one expecting a deadname around every corner, I am the one who has created this entire romantic drama as a way to distract myself from how nervous I was that the moment was here at last. My namesake, Julia Roberts, would be proud.
I’ve come this far and I have to see it through. I’m going to walk downstairs on wobbly heels and a dress that is technicallyat largefrom a Kids’ Choice Award–winning singer, smile until my gums hurt, and be extremely grateful about the insanely hot girl I never thought would want me, whose clear interest is the final proof that despite all this crippling insecurity Iama woman, so who gives a shit what my second cousin the accountant with a wonky eye and two failed marriages thinks?
A woman who is opening my door for me, her rental parked next to the spot Randy has just pulled into.
“Done freaking out?” she asks, taking my arm to lead me inside. She knows me so well already.
