Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out

Christina’s story begins on the #2 train, a subway line in New York City. It’s late, about two a.m. Christina is a beautiful, tall, twenty-year-old college student whose long hair is sometimes dyed strawberry blond and sometimes dark brown. On this night, she and her boyfriend, Gabriel, are sitting quietly in their seats, minding their own business. Two girls across the aisle are giggling and chattering loud enough for others to hear.

Girl 1: I don’t know what that is.

Girl 2: Yeah, what is that?

Christina: Are those girls talking about me?

Gabriel: Yeah, I think so.

Christina stares at them.

Girl 1: Hi? Can I help you with something?

Christina: Yeah, can you stop laughing at me?

Girl 1: This is a free country; I can laugh at whoever I want. And how do you know I’m laughing at-chu?

Christina: Because I’m not stupid. I heard you say, “I don’t know what that is.”

Girl 1: I know you’re a man with that big-ass face.

Christina, anger rising, rapidly taps a foot on the floor.

Gabriel: You better learn to respect people.

Girl 1: I am being respectful. I said “hi,” right?

Gabriel: No, you’re not being respectful. You’re over here giggling and laughing.

Girl 1: I can laugh at whatever I want. How ’bout you staying out of this and keep it between us girls.

Girl 1 makes quote marks with her fingers.

Christina: You better shut the fuck up before I fuck you up!

Girl 1: Who’s going to fuck me up?

Christina: Me!

Christina throws her purse to the side, jumps up, grabs Girl 1 by the hair, pulls her off the seat, and punches her in the face. Girl 1 grabs hold of Christina’s hair, but she is wearing a wig, so it comes off right in Girl 1’s hand.

Girl 1: Fuuuuck!

Girl 1 throws the wig to the side and starts punching. Girl 2 pulls out a can of mace. Gabriel grabs her by the throat and throws her on the floor. By now the train is in chaos. The other riders try to break them up, everybody screaming.

When the train reaches the next station and screeches to a halt, Christina is thrown back on the seat. Girl 1 lands a right punch to her mouth. Christina’s lip starts bleeding. Girl 1 then pounces on top of Christina, who is kicking, scratching, and trying hard not to cry. Eventually, the people on the train manage to break them up.

Girl 1: Yeah, yeah, you’re bleeding!

She prances around the train, singing: “I fucked a man up. Go get your pussy the fuck off the train.”

Christina tries to hold back tears.

Thinking about that day again . . . one of many . . . people can be so nasty, so rude. I didn’t do anything to her. She had to butt into my life for no reason.

I was picked on way too much to keep my mouth shut now. My mom is very worried that my temper could get me into trouble. I don’t let people walk all over me no more, like they used to.

I’ve been called a man before. Even now, some girls say I look like a man. I don’t know how they can pick it up, but they do. That makes me feel less a woman. I start questioning: Do I really pass in society? I don’t want to get emotional.

The other day I was thinking, I really, really hate being a transgender. It’s a constant struggle. It’s so annoying. While everyone else my age is saving up for a car or a house, I’m saving up to look possible. I’m saving up for a vagina.

Me and my boyfriend, we’ve been having problems. And it sucks that I can’t get over thinking that it’s because I’m transgender. Like, how do you go all your life dating genetic women and then date a trans woman? Doesn’t he miss a vagina? When a biological woman meets a man, she doesn’t have to explain herself and hope that she will be accepted for who she is, unless she has an STD or something. When people see you they know that you’re a woman, there’s no question about it. But for me, that’s something I have to explain and hope will be accepted.

When I go out I can’t make any mistakes. My hair has to be exactly right. My makeup, my outfit, even my smell must be feminine. There are certain outfits that make me look more masculine than other ones. The other day, I bought a shirt that had ruffles on the shoulders. They made my shoulders look huge. So I can’t wear that.

There were days when I would not go to school, knowing I damn well needed to get my butt to school ’cause I was on the verge of failing. My appearance stopped me. As I went outside I started to get panicky because I didn’t feel right about the way I looked. I just turned back.

When I was born, I was named Matthew. Early on, when I was little, I felt that I wanted to be a girl, but I didn’t have a full understanding about it. I knew I was a boy because my mom and my dad told me I was one.

When mom went to work, and my dad was in the living room watching TV, I would go into their bedroom with my brother Jonathan and play a game called Moolah. Moolah is slang for “money” in Spanish. The whole concept of the game was shopping. We would put on my mother’s scarves and attach bobby pins here and there so that the scarves would come down really long. That was our hair.

I was about six, and Jonathan was seven or eight. One of us would play the cashier, and the other would be the shopper. We’d go around the room with pretend purses in our hands and say, “I want this, this, that.” That was my idea about what girls do.

Christina has another brother, Elvin, who’s eight years older.

Elvin would sometimes see us and tell my dad or mom, “They’re acting like girls.”

When my mom questioned us, I’d say, “I’m just a man with long hair.” All my life I had an obsession with long hair. If we went to McDonald’s and they were giving away little Barbies, I wanted the Barbie because of the hair.

My mom bought me and my brother lots of toys. When the movie Pocahontas came out, my mom bought me a John Smith doll, with his short hair, and my brother the Indian, with long, silky hair. I got really angry. In the middle of the night, I chopped the Indian’s hair off. I did.

The teasing began in elementary school.

They called me a sissy and a faggot. I told my mom, and she wrote a letter to the teacher or the principal. It didn’t embarrass me to get a bully in trouble, but I didn’t want to have to keep going to my mom saying somebody’s bothering me. That was embarrassing.

My brother Jonathan said, “You point out the kids to me, and I’m going to fuck them up.” I was so afraid that things would escalate, and I didn’t want my brother to get hurt. So I never said anything.

There was this girl in my elementary school in the fifth grade. All the boys were crazy about her. She was the it girl. She already had big boobs, a small waist, and a big butt. She was my ideal girl. I wanted to look like her. I wanted the attention from boys. She was tall. Her name was Christina. At that time I thought that if I was a girl, my name would be Christina. My mom hates that name.

Christina’s mother loves her children very much. But she did not love the paths the younger two were taking. And she made no bones about it.

By the time Jonathan was eleven years old, he told me he was gay. When he turned twelve or thirteen, he told my mother and she completely flipped out. “That’s disgusting!” she said, and started crying. Then she said to me, “I hope you’re not gay too.”

My mother comes from a Catholic family who always went to church. She had no idea that Jonathan was gay. You can’t tell unless you pay close attention to his eyebrows or something because they’re really plucked. I was even shocked when he told me. I was very, very shocked.

Once my mom found out, everything started changing for my brother. He started dressing more feminine. He wore more colors. He brought gay people to the house. My mom wanted to be supportive, but she couldn’t. She went to church and prayed for him. She cried over it. I have no idea if she spoke to the priest, but she did speak with her sisters. They all said, “He’ll come out of it. It’s just a phase.” Bull crap!

I really was close to my extended family, but not anymore. They are just so narrow-minded. Every time I go over to my grandmother’s house, they want to pray for me. I really don’t need to be prayed for.

I was always feminine. Even in my early teens, I was feminine. I’d ask my mom, “How come my voice isn’t getting deep?”

“Oh, you’re just a late bloomer. Eventually, you will get a deep voice.” But I never did.

Christina begged her mother not to send her to an all-boys Catholic school. Her mother insisted.

At least send me to a coed Catholic school. She didn’t want to do that. She was under the assumption that I was straight — straight but feminine.

My oldest brother, Elvin, had gone to an all-boys Catholic school, where he became disciplined and focused. So off I went to Mount Saint Michael Academy, a Catholic school for boys.

I was so nervous. Before I went there, I asked my gay brother, Jonathan, “How do I act like a man?” He would tell me I had to walk a certain way, like the hoodlums on the street, walking with a little lean, like, a little ghetto, gangsta boy. I practiced.

“You have to wear baggy pants. You have to wear oversize T-shirts, a do-rag, and sneakers.” Ugh! Everything I was not interested in! I liked wearing simple T-shirts with jeans. I’d look at girls’ clothes and think, Oh, my God, I wish I could wear that!

Jonathan taught me how to sit with my legs open, which I could never do naturally. I hated it. It was the most uncomfortable feeling in the world for me. It looked gross.

Nothing came naturally to me. He told me I had to deepen my voice a little bit and talk like a man. That was kinda hard to keep up.

When I walked into the all-boys school that first day, I felt I had done everything Jonathan taught me. I said, “Oh, hey, what’s up? My name is Matthew. Oh, what’s your name?” I wore baggy pants. It came off so phony; it just wasn’t me. At all!

No one accepted me as a straight boy. Within a week, they started picking up that I was naturally feminine, a quiet kid, a shy kid. When I talked, I moved my hands around. When I drank something, I put my pinkie finger up. Those are not exactly masculine traits.

People started talking. “I think he’s gay.” One boy who was nasty called me a faggot. I would stand in the courtyard in the school, and someone would beam double-A batteries at me, just to hurt me. If someone beams double-A batteries at you, it’s going to hurt. They would throw branches and twigs at me. They didn’t do it to my face. They would just toss it and act like it wasn’t them.

Once the kids started picking on me, calling me names, I needed somewhere to go and vent. I went to the school counselors. I had four counselors in four years. I trusted all of them because I assumed they were professionals. And they were. They helped me a lot.

Eventually I did find somebody to be my friend. Christopher. Christopher was a very feminine boy who liked Britney Spears, just like me. I had the feeling he was gay. When I asked him, though, he said he wasn’t. He played it up that he was a straight boy, but I wasn’t buying it. Eventually he came out to me and he became my best gay friend. He wasn’t transgender. He was just gay. We still talk to this day.

Hoay is my best straight boy friend. I used to be very attracted to Hoay. When I was in my androgynous stage, I told him on several occasions, “I like you a lot.”

I’d say, “But I’m a girl.” That was something he couldn’t grasp. I don’t blame him. He met me as a boy, so I can’t expect him to see me completely as a girl. He accepts me as a girl now, but I don’t know if he completely sees me as one. He treats me like a girl. He’s protective. I’ve heard from other people that Hoay really cares about me and worries about me a lot. But I don’t think he would ever want to be with me.

I’ve gotten over that whole attraction to him. I see him as my brother. I’m glad to have him as one of the high-school friends I still talk to.

The school gave us Mount Saint Michael T-shirts for gym class. We had Mount Saint Michael shorts, and of course had to wear sneakers. Ugh! I was okay about going to the locker room, but I felt uncomfortable changing in front of people. I had hairy legs, and I couldn’t shave them because for one, I didn’t want my mom asking questions, and two, I didn’t want to make myself more of an outcast. It felt so nasty to have hairy legs.

At that time I tried to blend in. I had a little mustache, more like peach fuzz, that I eventually shaved off because I didn’t like it. I was still trying to convince people I was straight. (But by my senior year, I was wearing spandex to gym class.)

I’d go to the corner to change because I didn’t want to take off my pants. I’d keep the T-shirt under my button-down ’cause I never wanted to take off my shirt in front of the other guys. I didn’t feel that I was exposing my breasts, ’cause I didn’t have them yet. I just never liked to be seen with my shirt off. It made me feel uncomfortable. No one laughed at me. The only time they started laughing at me was in my senior year when I started dressing like a woman.

After everybody changed, we’d all go upstairs to the gymnasium and sit on our spots. The instructor, Mr. Valentino — I really hated him so much — there need to be more understanding gym teachers, there really do — he would make me do push-ups and sit-ups. We’d run around the track or play basketball. I told them I had asthma and I couldn’t run. This is the truth. I do have asthma. But I also didn’t want to run.

Then when we played basketball, I was always picked last. The teacher would place me on a team, and the boys would get upset, not because I was feminine but because I just couldn’t play. I didn’t know how to dribble the ball. I didn’t shoot. I had never played these things. My dad would take me to a park and try to teach me, but I was never interested. I didn’t want to ride bikes. I didn’t want to play football. I didn’t want to play Frisbee. None of that! I wanted to shop. I’ve been drawn to shopping all my life.

I wasn’t really interested in learning, I just did what I had to do, and that was that. If there was a test, I’d study, but I wasn’t interested in English or history. I was interested in art and fashion. I guess I was good at it. I did what I had to do and was on the honor roll and dean’s list all four years.

I wasn’t a reader. I read Cosmo. I read Glamour. For some reason, my mom didn’t think much of it. She was in denial.

I drew girls a lot. That’s all I drew. To this day, I draw girls. I’m so into looking good and beautiful, and I’m always trying to figure out the next thing to make me more feminine.

One of the school counselors said, “I want to see your sketchbook. I want to see your art.”

“Sure.” I showed her pictures of girl after girl after girl — different kinds of girls. She said, “You know, when people draw, it’s kind of like a way of escaping. People draw what they want to be.”

The moment she said that — I had never spoken to her about transgender issues; I just said that I was gay and that people disliked me, they hated me — the moment she said that, I started thinking, Well, yeah, I want to be a girl, but it will never happen.

I told her that I wished I had been born a girl, but I knew it would never happen. If it did happen, I’d worry about passing. “I don’t want people wondering what I am. I don’t want to get hurt. So I’m definitely not going to do anything about it.” And she was, like, “Okay.”

In my eleventh-grade year, I went with my class on a boys’ retreat. On the retreat we all had to admit something, or say something we needed help with from God, because, after all, it was a Catholic retreat. I told everybody that I just want acceptance from everyone because I’m gay. By that time, I knew I wanted to be a woman, but I said that I was a gay boy because it was easier. The room was silent. I was so nervous. It was the first time I actually came out to people that I was different.

I think that’s why some of the boys later had trouble understanding my transition. In my eleventh-grade year, I said I was gay, and in my senior year, I said that I was a girl.

I learned about transgender people when my brother Jonathan was dating a boy named Renee. No, I take that back. I learned about it when my brother started cross-dressing. He would dress up in women’s clothes. He put on a wig and filled up bags with rice and put them in a bra. He went out in seven-inch stilettos and really short shorts. I found it really weird. We would play photo shoots in my house when my mom and dad were gone. This was when we were in our teens. I was about sixteen. He was seventeen.

He’s not a cross-dresser now. I think he was trying to figure himself out too. He went from acting very straight, to very feminine, to cross-dressing, to straight-acting again. That was his process.

I asked him, “Could I look like a girl too?” My brother said, “No, you could never look like a girl.”

“Let me try.” I went into the bathroom and put on everything he put on. I looked in the mirror and thought I was the most beautiful girl in the world. I became Christina. I walked out of the bathroom to show my brother.

I just felt so, so indescribable. I was happy. Here I was, sixteen, still in high school, and feeling great.

He said, “You don’t look like a girl. I really don’t think you can pass as a girl.”

There came a time when I had to take everything off. That really, really hurt. It was sad to see Christina go away.

My brother was dating a boy whose mother was transgender. He said, “My boyfriend’s mom is transgender. She dresses like a girl and everything. She has the boobs and the hair and the body.” When he showed me a picture of her, I was like, Wow, it is actually possible to change into a woman.

I can’t remember exactly when I did it, but one day I typed transsexual into Google. Transsexual is another way of saying transgender. The site said, “When a man or a woman, or vice versa, feels that they were born in the wrong body, and they want to be the opposite sex.” And there were a whole list of things, like, if you want to wear women’s clothes, if you wish you were born a woman — I can’t really remember everything exactly — but if you are these things, then you’re transgender. This connected with me.

I thought, Maybe it’s possible that I can do this. But I wasn’t sure how to take the leap forward, especially because my mom still thought I was straight. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I didn’t want her to start going crazy or emotionally disown me. She didn’t disown my brother, but it kind of, like, felt that he was disowned. It did.

My dad didn’t care. He’s a very accepting, very open person. When Jonathan came out to my mom, she said, “Don’t you dare tell your father! He’s going to flip out.”

My brother was, like, “I told dad before I told you! And he took it way better than you ever did.” My mom was really surprised. I mean, I’m telling you, nobody had a clue about Jonathan.

I saw another counselor, a man, at my school. He asked, “Matthew, how do you see your life?”

“I don’t know. I just want to finish college and get a job and have a husband. I just want to be a housewife. I want to cook and I want to clean. I want to take care of the kids. I want to do all that.”

“Everything that you’re saying is from a woman’s perspective. Staying home, cooking, taking care of kids. That’s what women do, traditionally. That’s what they were known to do.”

At that point, I had done my research. I told him, “I want to be a woman, but I’m very scared to do it. I’m afraid I’d be rejected by society, and that would make my life worse.”

Then I read that if you wait too long, the hormones are not going to be as effective. If you take hormones at sixteen, you’re basically going through another puberty stage. When you take hormones at forty, it kind of doesn’t have the same effect. When you’re sixteen, you’re still growing. If you replace your hormones, you won’t grow as tall or your bones won’t be as big. That’s why I wish I had started at sixteen. I wouldn’t be so tall. I didn’t get hormones until I was eighteen, which is when Callen-Lorde allows you to do it.

At this point, only my school counselor and my brother knew that I was planning to transition. My brother knew a lot of transgender girls. He took me around to the Village (Greenwich Village), the Village Pier on Christopher Street, where there are lots transgender girls. They fascinated me. They looked so real. This has always been my worry: Am I going to look real? I don’t want to not look real, because, I mean, what’s the point?

That summer, right before her senior year at the all-boys high school, Christina decided to become female. She stopped worrying about what her mother would think. She was going to do what she needed to do, what she had to do.

When I told my best friend, Hoay, that I wanted to become a girl, he said, “No, don’t do that.”

“Because God made you a boy for a reason. And if he made you this way, it’s for a purpose.”

“Well, what’s my purpose? I have no idea what my purpose is as a boy. I’m not going to have a kid. I’m not going to marry a woman.”

“You told me that you are gay and now you’re saying you’re transgender. Why can’t you just be a gay man?”

I told him that I thought that I was gay because I was attracted to men. But I’m attracted to straight men, not gay men. Before I educated myself about what being transgender really is, I thought that I must be a gay person.

The Google site said, “Sexual orientation has nothing to do with gender identity. There are gay transgenders and there are straight transgenders.”

That was something really hard for the boys to grasp. It took at least two years for Hoay to get accustomed to calling me she, to actually believe I was a woman, to see me as a woman.

Transitioning is a very long process. We go through stages. First we look like a man. Then we go through gender bending. And eventually we look like a woman. Gender bending is when you don’t look like a male and you don’t look like a female. You’re changing from one gender to another.

My hair was short. With short hair, I looked like a boy. I had to grow it out. Because I was gender bending, I started to dress feminine. But I still looked like a boy. People would say to me, “What are you?” Total strangers.

I loved the attention back then. It’s really weird. It’s really weird because now if people think I’m a man, it sometimes turns me into a very violent person. I’ve gotten into countless fights with people.

Christina says this calmly while laughing at herself.

My hair grew long pretty fast. I dyed it red, cut it to my jaw, and then got bangs. I had to shave constantly — ugh, that’s so annoying. I wore tighter clothes, but they were boy clothes. I didn’t plan on telling my mom. I wanted her to figure it out for herself.

I tried to think of ways to make me look more feminine. I bought a lot of pink things. The thing that made my mom think I was gay was that my cell phone was attached to a key chain that had pink beads, hearts, and a little bunny. It was clearly for a girl.

My mom said, “We’re going to your godparents’ house. Can you do me a favor and take that thing off your phone?”

“Who said this is for girls? Why can’t a boy have it? There’s nothing wrong with that.”

She got fed up. “Okay, Matthew, I know you’re gay. But that doesn’t mean you have to show the whole world you’re gay.”

“Have you ever seen those people on Maury? The Maury show? Have you ever seen those people? ‘Is it a guy? Is it a girl?’ Well, that’s me. I’m transgender.”

“I have a gender identity disorder, and I want to become a girl.” (I had diagnosed myself.)

She was, like, “Okaaaaay, can you do me a favor and try not to show it as much?”

Sometimes I feel that my mom misses her son. She doesn’t tell me, but my brother told me he heard her crying about it one night. She misses her son. I told her, “I’m still the same person. I just look different.” I don’t understand why she feels the way she does because I’m not a parent.

Once my mom knew, it was time to start making my moves. I told my dad. He said, “I always knew it.” I started crying because I had been so scared of his reaction. He said, “I love you. It doesn’t matter to me. I knew since you were a little kid that you always wanted to be a girl. And I knew it was coming.” He’s great.

My senior year was my best and worst year in high school. The day before school started, I got my nails done. Pink. It was the first time I got my nails done, and I was so excited about it. To hide them from my mom, I walked around the house like this.

Christina curls her hands into a fist to hide her nails.

Eventually, my mom saw my nails and completely freaked out about it. “Oh, my God, why did you get your nails done?”

“You’re going to get in trouble. You’re going to get hurt. Somebody’s going to hurt you, baby.” She wanted me to take them off.

“No, Mom, I’ll be fine.” They were acrylic, and I was not going to take them off.

I was so excited about the first day of school. I was so excited that I was actually starting the transition. I blew out my hair. I put on my makeup: purple eye shadow, mascara, blush, lip liner, and lipstick. Put on my blue button-down shirt, my tie, and my khaki pants. Seniors are required to wear gray sweaters. Before school started, I took my sweater to the tailor and said I wanted to make it tight and feminine. He made it really tight for me. Everybody else’s sweaters were baggy.

That first day I walked outside, people just stared at me. I loved the attention. I didn’t think I looked like a girl yet, but there was something about people acknowledging me, wondering what I was, that made me happy.

I walked through the school gate and into the auditorium. People’s jaws dropped. I walked down the aisle, saying, “Hi . . . hi there . . . oh, hey.” I was so happy. I wasn’t worried anymore. I was being me.

The principal was telling us what classes to go to. I just sat there, so happy, with my purse — my big, black purse. I walked to class swinging it, and my friend was going, “What the fuck are you doing?”

He couldn’t grasp the fact. He thought a boy dressing in girls’ clothes is gay. Period. Whatever.

As I walked down the hall, the freshmen were entering the school. When one freshman saw me, he was, like, “Hey, Mami, you looking so good. What are you doing here?”

A big smile fills Christina’s face.

So many of the freshmen were hitting on me. I guess they were being macho. Finally one of the older boys told the younger ones, “That’s not a girl. She’s a he, a senior.” And they all started laughing at that boy, saying that he was gay because he hit on me. They were making fun of him.

I quickly became the school’s joke. It was really the underclassmen that had a problem with me. They found my female MySpace account — I had a MySpace account as a woman and I had a MySpace account as a man. My cross-dressing pictures were on the female account. There, I first introduced myself as Christina. I used that account to talk as a woman to different men. It was my way of escaping reality while I was in what I call my androgynous phase.

Someone in the school — to this day I don’t know who did it — found that account and printed out all my crossing pictures. They posted them all over the hallways. It didn’t bother me. I said, “Oh, look at me! I’m so pretty in those pictures.” I looked great in those pictures. I liked the attention. It was guilty pleasure. It’s really weird. I was so comfortable transitioning, I was happy to actually begin. Whenever boys gave me attention, good or bad, they were recognizing my femininity. That made me really happy. The only thing that bothered me was when somebody wrote fag on my picture. Somebody also wrote it on my locker.

People didn’t know how to take what I was doing. They were shocked — including teachers and the principal. The principal called me to the office. He and the dean wanted to talk to me.

“Okay, fine,” I said, “I’ll sweep it to the side. But I’m not getting rid of my bangs.” The dean, the principal, and me have always had a problem.

Dress Down Day is when you don’t have to wear a uniform. You can wear whatever you want. Dress Down Day? I came into school my usual self — makeup, hair done, nails on — and I wore a pink sweater, a girls’ American Eagle sweater. I wore my mom’s jeans; I actually fit into my mom’s jeans, but they were really tight around the butt and hips. And I wore these flats from Payless that I had bought. At that point, I started progressively buying women’s clothes and throwing out the boys’ clothes.

I wasn’t taking hormones yet. I was waiting. I had gone to Callen-Lorde and started counseling. Their rule is that you have to be eighteen and take counseling for four months before you get hormones.

I sat down in homeroom and took out my makeup bag. I was putting on my mascara, which always embarrassed my friends. “Matthew, don’t do that shit here. What are you doing?”

“I don’t care what people think. I’m going to do what I want.” And on the loudspeaker comes, “Please send Matthew V. to the principal’s office. NOW!”

I walked into the office and said, “Hi, did you need me for something?” Again, the dean was there; the principal was there. The principal said, “Yeah, why are you dressed like this?”

“Because I want to dress like this. It’s Dress Down Day. I can wear whatever I want.”

“Well, I am a woman.” He got really angry. He slammed his hand on the table, “YOU’RE A BOY! YOU’RE NOT A WOMAN! YOU’RE A BOY!”

I started crying at that point. I said, “Actually, I am a girl. You just need to educate yourself. Get on Google and Google transsexual, ’cause I’m a girl.”

He said, “You’re creating this whole problem, this whole circus. Anything that happens to you is your fault, because you’re coming to school dressed like a clown!”

“Well, I don’t have any boys’ clothes. So if you buy me boys’ clothes, then I’ll wear them.”

“Then I guess you need to go home and stay home and you cannot come to school on any other Dress Down Day.”

The dean was a little calmer, a little nicer. The principal was a straight-up asshole. I hated him.

The dean said, “Look, Matthew, if you’re a girl, why do you have to show it now?”

“Because I’m not waiting for nothing. I’m not waiting for high school to be over. I want this done now! I’m starting now!”

“But it’s not in the handbook. If it’s not in the handbook, that means I can wear nails.”

“Well, now you know. Next year you need to put it in the handbook. Till then, I’m going to wear my nails.”

The dean said, “Again, we didn’t think we had to address these things because it’s all boys here. We assumed that this would not be an issue.”

I told him, “You know what? You guys, you need to understand: I’m transgender. I feel like a woman. I don’t feel like a boy. This is what I want to do. There are other transgender people in this school who are afraid to come out.”

Other students had come up to me privately and told me that they feel like a woman but that they couldn’t show it because of school, because of their mom, because they were scared. I’d tell them that I was there once. “You just have to give it a shot. There’s nothing they can really do to you.” That’s what life is about, taking chances. You’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t give it a try.

I think the other students were freaked out because I looked like a girl and I was pressing against gender boundaries. There were some instances when I’d be walking up the stairs and people thought I was a girl. “Oh, there’s a girl here? Oh, wait, that’s that weird kid.”

In art class the teacher told us to hang up our paintings in the cafeteria while the underclassmen were having lunch. I was immediately worried. I told Hoay, who was in the class, “I’m really nervous. I feel like they might throw something at me.” He told me to relax and just hang up my artwork. Lo and behold, when I walked into the cafeteria, everyone took immediate notice of me. I was kinda hard to miss with my red hair. Then slowly but surely I started to hear, “Boo, booo, boooo, booooo.” It got louder and louder, and more intense.

Then they started shouting, “You don’t belong here. Go somewhere else. Get out! Faggot.”

The teachers tried to calm everyone down. I gave my art to Hoay, and I walked out, smiling. I tried hard to hold back my tears. I was smiling because I didn’t want them to see me mad. That would mean I was losing and they were winning. It did hurt, though. So many people hated me for no reason.

Christina begins to cry. After a few moments, a composed Christina says, “When the going gets tough, what do tough girls do? We go shopping!”

After a few hours of shopping, we settle down for a lunch in a noisy Korean restaurant. Christina knows I’m curious about her high-school years.

I remember religion class — oh, I hated religion class — one kid raised his hand while we were talking about sexuality. He said, “I think it’s okay for somebody to be gay. But why can’t they just be gay and not turn into a woman? If you change your sex, that’s a whole other level.” Of course the kids knew I was in the classroom, and the boy next to me said, “You’re going to take that? You’re just going to let him say something like that?”

The teacher knew there was going to be a problem because by that point I was really standing up for myself. I wasn’t going to take anybody’s crap anymore.

So I raised my hand and said, “Well, for your information, being transgender is different from being gay. Being transgender is feeling like a woman. Gay men don’t want to become women. They’re men. They like being men, and they like other men. Transgender has nothing to do with sexuality at all. There are transgender girls that like girls. There are transgender girls who like boys. How do you explain that?” The kid had some snide remark, but I can’t remember what it was. The professor immediately changed the subject.

I wasn’t afraid to explain who I was. I like educating people. I don’t like people staying narrow-minded and ignorant and stupid.

There was another time when I was sitting with my friend Christopher, the gay one, in class. Christopher had a very feminine voice, high pitched, and he could be very flamboyant at times. This boy in front of me, his name was Andrew, called Christopher a faggot for no reason.

I stick up for my friends, especially if they can’t stick up for themselves. He was, like, taking it. I tapped Andrew’s shoulder and said, “Why don’t you just leave him the fuck alone?”

“The reason you have a problem with this,” I explained slowly, “is that you’re gay and you’re insecure about your own sexuality.”

We started arguing back and forth while the teacher was trying to teach class. The teacher looked over and asked, “Hey, what’s going on over there?”

The teacher said, “Matthew, can you get up from your seat and move to the back?”

I got really upset. When I got up, I pushed my table, and the desk just flew over. I guess Andrew felt threatened about that. He got up and punched me in my face. Then he threw me between the desks and was stomping on my head and back. Andrew was a football player and very strong.

The teacher didn’t try to break us up. He ran into the hallway and called for help. I don’t know who he was calling help for because we didn’t have any security guards. At least the other boys didn’t join in.

I had to go into the nurse’s office because I was bleeding from my lip, always my lip. I had scratches on my face too. Even though I was angry about the fight, I was really angry that he had popped off my nail. I was mad. I didn’t get a chance to hit him back.

I told my mom. We got him expelled and arrested. I eventually dropped the charges ’cause I just wanted him out of the school. I never saw him again.

I never cried in school until I got into that fight. After that I’d cry when some boy called me ugly or said I was not a woman. My friend Hoay would be there for me, patting me on the back, like, “Don’t cry. It’s okay.” Getting teased every day was getting hard on me.

Deep into my senior year, I went home after school and I sat in the dark with music playing. I listened to an Alicia Keys song called “Caged Bird.” The lyrics made me cry. My mom opened the door and asked, “Why are you crying?” I just burst into tears, telling her how hard it is to be transgender. “I feel like the world is against me. I want to become a woman.”

My mom asked if I wanted to go to another school, but I thought, What’s the point? I’m in my senior year. If I switched, then these guys won, and I didn’t want them to win. They wanted me to leave school. They really wanted me to leave. They kept saying, “You don’t belong here. You belong in a girls’ school,” which made me feel good.

People treated me like I was a disease. If there was a crowd of boys, I could literally go like this.

Christina stretches out her arms like Moses parting the water.

And the boys would jump back. “Don’t touch it — you might get it!” they would say about me.

I enjoyed that. I enjoyed the attention. I’d be with my friends and say, “Wanna see a really cool thing I can do?”

“Watch this!” So I’d move my hands toward the boys, and they would jump back.

There was one teacher, a math teacher, who would stare at me. I would sit in class putting my lip gloss on and think, What is this guy looking at? I always took stares as negative. Once the class was leaving, he pulled me to the side. “What is all this? Why are you putting lip gloss on and stuff?”

He was smiling at me. “Yeah, I noticed that. What’s going to be your name?”

It wasn’t until I was done with the four-month therapy program that I could take hormones. In March, my senior year, I started taking hormones. They started changing me fast. When I first started taking them, I got very, very sick. I felt weak. I got headaches. I went to my psychology teacher, because in class we studied neurons and synapses and how our bodies react to certain medicines. I asked him, “If you change your hormones from one sex to the next, do you become sick?”

“You can become sick because your body’s not used to it. Estrogen is foreign to your body. You have some estrogen but not much.” My doctor told me to let my body get used to it. I might be sick for a month. And I was.

When I had testosterone in my body, I was a very horny boy. Before I went on hormones, I was able to get an erection and maintain one. Whenever I saw a boy I liked in the hallway or in gym class — the locker room is the best place to get my eyes on flesh — I’d get it. I think that’s why a lot of gay people like to have sex. They’re both men, they both have a lot of testosterone. It’s kind of a manly thing.

The estrogen slowed down my sex drive. It’s not that I had no sex drive; I have it once in a blue moon. My boyfriend feels like I’m not attracted to him. Of course I’m attracted to him. I just don’t have the want or the need or the urge for sex all the time.

There are certain things that turn me on, but most of the time I don’t want to have sex. I always wanted foreplay and romantic attention. My boyfriend was never the foreplay, romantic type. He just wanted to get right to it. What are you gonna do?

I’m glad I no longer have all that testosterone that fueled me to want sex. Normally guys can get it up with a cold wind. That doesn’t happen to me anymore. I don’t have the morning wood. I only have it when I’m aroused.

It’s kind of weird: I know what it’s like to be a man, and I know what it’s like to be a woman. That whole testosterone-driven thing is something they can’t really help. I’m happier without having that sex drive. The constant need for sex is annoying — it really is. I just realized that right now.

You know what I also realized right now? I know what it’s like to be in the boys’ bathroom and I know what it’s like to be in the girls’ bathroom. I think the boys are way more disgusting than the girls.

By April, my breasts started growing. I was surprised and excited. I was the only boy in class with tight shirts and budding breasts. Everyone wanted to touch them. Of course I let them. It just feels like flesh; it feels like nothing.

Then the time came when I first put on a bra. Now, that scared me! It was so uncomfortable. I had been going the whole year flat-chested. I was comfortable being a gender bender, not yet comfortable being a girl. Once I put on a bra, I knew this was it. That was when people needed to see me as a girl.

Before I put on the bra, I told my friends, “If you want to call me Christina, great. If you want to call me Matthew, that’s fine too. But once I make full transition, don’t you dare call me Matthew.”

In the beginning of my transition, I would literally panic if I didn’t get my hormone shot. Now I forget to take it. I say, “Oh, I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll do it next week.” I’m trying to get back on a schedule. I took it two weeks ago. I take it every two weeks and that’s annoying. I hate it with all my heart. The thing is biological girls don’t have to do that. They don’t have to put a shot in their thigh just to maintain their figure. But because I’m transgender, I have this constant worry.

I can tell when I don’t take my shot because I start to feel physical changes. I start to lose my shape, my hourglass. My skin feels rougher. I grow facial hair quicker.

During Christina’s gender-bending stage, people were attacking her right and left. Christina’s mother was having a very hard time dealing with one gay son and another who was becoming a daughter. But Christina was unhappy and in danger.

Her mom says, “At that time Christina still had the features of a man. She was dressing like a girl, but she didn’t look like a girl. It was very hard. Imagine me waiting for her to come home. I was always afraid something happened to her: somebody attacked her, or somebody said something to her. I said, ‘Baby, you can’t wear so much makeup. You can’t do that. You’re in a boys’ school.’ She’s a fighter. She fought. That’s how I taught her.”

In spite of her feelings and reservations, Christina’s mother pulled out her credit card and bought her daughter breast implants. “Now she looks more like a woman,” Christina’s mom says proudly. And the bond between mother and daughter grew stronger.

I used to go to the gym a lot but I stopped ’cause I was losing my hips. That looked masculine. And there it goes again with my whole fear of being all man. I started eating more to gain back my hips. I didn’t want to end up like my friend, a transgender girl who’s so worried about looking male, she’s afraid to go outside.

An announcement over the loudspeaker: “Let me remind you: You cannot bring a same-sex person to the prom. You cannot wear a dress to the prom.”

And everybody started laughing when they announced that. “Oops, sorry, Matthew, you can’t wear a dress.” It was so annoying.

“Okay, I may not be wearing a dress, but I definitely am going to look like a girl.” I bought a woman’s tuxedo that was curved at the waist, and it made me look hourglass. I wore a pink button-down shirt, open. I bought one-inch, peep-toe heels. I got my hair done and extensions put in to make my hair look long. I had my nails done and my makeup and my eyebrows and everything. I thought I looked great. I was so happy. My friend Josephine, who I’ve known since first or second grade, came with me.

I think the prom was a good experience. I had a lot of fun, actually. By that point a lot of the seniors accepted me and we were friends. Even if they weren’t my friends, they treated me with respect. The majority that hated me was the underclassmen. But the seniors had been with me for four years. They had grown accustomed to me at that point. Did they agree with what I was doing? No. But they were, like, “Well, that’s Matthew.”

After the prom, we took a boat ride. The captain said, “Girls in this line. Boys on that line.” I thought, Let me try this out, and I went on the girls’ line. All my guy friends were saying, “That’s not fair! Why are you on the girls’ line?” But they were just poking fun at me because the girls got to go onboard first.

When the guys got on, I was already dancing. I rubbed it in their faces. “I got on the boat first because I’m a girl. I got on the girls’ line. Ha, ha, ha.”

Nobody questioned it. That felt great. For the first time in my life, I went on the girls’ line and was not told I had to be on the boys’ line.

Graduation was such an exciting thing for me. It was annoying that my mom wouldn’t let me wear my weave. I think she was still a little embarrassed about me, but she didn’t want to admit it. It sounds wrong to say, “I’m embarrassed about my own child.” But I knew that she was. She didn’t want me to get my nails done, but I did. She didn’t want me wearing makeup, but I did.

When I walked down the aisle, all the parents were taking pictures of me. Of me! I’m sure their sons had told them about me. Some wanted me to stand alongside their sons when they took pictures. Others wanted to take their own picture with me. One father told me, “You’re the first girl to graduate an all-boys school.”

“I am,” I told him. And he just took a picture of me. I felt great when he said that. I was making history for Mount. They will never forget me.

Sometime after I graduated, I asked one of the boys, “How was Mount Saint Michael after I left?”

He said, “You wouldn’t believe how many people started coming out of the closet.” I felt great about that. Even when I first came out, many others started to come out. So many. And I had a lot more friends because of it.

Once Christina turned eighteen, after graduation and just before college, she legally changed her name.

My mom was lying in bed one day and I said, “Mom, I’m going tomorrow to legally change my name to Christina.” And she was, like, “Okay.” She didn’t think I was serious.

The next day when I came back with my papers and everything, she said, “Your name is really Christina? Baby, why didn’t you tell me so we could talk about a name?”

“Yeah, Mom, I told you.” My mom hates my name. I mean, I also changed my middle name to Jayleen, the name she would have given me if I was born her daughter. I gave her that!

My mom said that I was changing what she named me. But I couldn’t walk around with the name Matthew.

At FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) everyone welcomed me with open arms, even when I told them I was transgender. I’m completely girl here. But there are no straight boys at this school. They are all gay. I wanted to experience being a girl and falling in love.

Women at a very early age are taught not to be hos, not to let anybody touch them, not to let anyone disrespect them. Well, I don’t know anything about that ’cause I wasn’t raised a girl. As far as exposing my body, I wasn’t really taught not to do that.

I’m learning to be female. A lot of times trans women dress very sexy to get attention from men. If a man hits on them, says how beautiful they are, in their minds they look passable.

I do it too. I dress sexy. I used to be borderline ho. But that’s not what most women do, ’cause women are comfortable with themselves; they know that they’re women. But a trans woman, me, is trying to convince herself by showing skin and being sexy.

I wanted to experience being a girl and falling in love. None of my transgender friends have boyfriends. There’s one girl who made a video saying that no man is ever going to take a trans girl serious. That’s what I feel. He’s going to want to have sex with a trans girl, to see what it’s like, but at the end of the day, he’s going to put the ring on the genetic female.

Whenever my transgender friends get a boyfriend, I say, “I give it one month, or two.” When a man finds out you’re trans, his respect for you goes down. If a man meets me as a woman, he’s very nice, gentle, opens the door for me, and doesn’t talk about sex. As soon as he finds out I’m trans, he starts talking about sex. It’s frustrating because he’s not treating me like a woman anymore. It makes me less a woman.

I’m learning how to deal with men. I talk about men a lot. I do. Right? Don’t I? I keep going back to men, boys . . . terrible.

When I started dating straight men, it was very scary to admit that I was transgender. They could get very violent and freak out. Or they could say they didn’t care. But I always doubt that people are genuine when they say they don’t care. What’s their motive? Sex? I feel that no man takes a trans woman seriously at all.

Talking to guys, telling them that I’m trans, gets old so fast. They ask stupid questions, like, “How do we have sex?”

I get mad when they ask me that, but I can’t blame them for their ignorance. If they’ve never had an experience with a trans woman, then how can they know? But that shouldn’t be the first question that comes out of their mouths.

They ask me so many questions that are very personal, like, Do I still have it? Do I still have my part?

If I did get to the point where I felt comfortable talking about it, I would say, “You know, it’s just like doing it with a regular female, only I don’t have the lady part.” They can use common sense to figure out what that means.

I have to get accustomed to men paying the bill. I’m used to “I pay my part; you pay your part.” But on dates they’ll say, “No, I’ll pay the bill.”

At first I felt bad about it because I felt that I didn’t deserve to have a man pay for my meal. We were both getting to know each other, so why did he have to pay for it? I also had to get accustomed to a man holding a door open for me. I had to get accustomed to a man walking on the outside of the street. That was very, very weird.

My mom never spoke to me about sex. She didn’t talk to my brothers, either. I feel that if I had been a girl, she would have spoken to me about it. I learned from my own experiences that I was getting nowhere having sex with different guys. When I did, no one took me seriously. I learned that in order for a man to take you serious, and love you for you, you can’t have sex with him right away. When I met Gabriel, he didn’t believe me when I told him I was trans. He thought I was just saying that.

He tried to have sex with me right away, but I didn’t let him, not until he said, “I want you to be my girlfriend.” I wanted to be sure he was really serious. We didn’t have sex for two months. I wanted to see if he truly liked me for me and not because of the way I look.

I can’t truly let myself go with him. I’ve been in bed with my boyfriend, but I never let him see it. Ever. I wear my panties the whole time when we’re intimate. And that really sucks because I can’t be fully intimate with him. I’m always worried he’s going to see it; he’s going to feel it.

Gabriel went against his own family for me. At first they didn’t know that I was trans and they loved me; they thought I was a great person. One of his cousins went to Mount Saint Michael. He went on my Facebook page and saw that I used to go to Mount. It was easy to put two and two together.

He told my business to Gabriel’s whole family. Once they found out I was transgender, they said, “Don’t let her in my house.”

I’ve been with my boyfriend for three and a half years, and that’s because I put up with his bullshit a lot. Right now we’re on a break. I can’t help but think that he wants to be with another girl. He’s done this to me so many times. Once, I had gone out with another guy and he cheated on me too. Girls get cheated on all the time.

If I had been born a girl, I would have had lots more boyfriends. If I had been born a female, I could leave Gabriel. I have mixed feelings about this. There are so many things I love about him. He’s accepted me. When people in the street call me a man, he’s never embarrassed. How am I going to find that again?

All my trans friends with vaginas look beautiful. They got everything they wanted. It would be so great if I could get an operation, if I could get my vagina. It will be great to get that over with and live my life. I feel like I’m not truly living my life yet. I’m living it fifty percent. If I had my surgery, I would live it to the fullest.

I still hang out with boys from Mount Saint Michael. They’re straight. I went to a house party recently where there were a lot of Mount boys. I came in and announced, “Learn your pronouns because I don’t want to have to slap somebody tonight.”

They said “hi,” and gave me kisses on the cheek. I was surprised. I was really happy. That showed me they accept me as a woman.

They didn’t give me no pound. There was one boy who put his hand out like that, and I said, “I don’t do that.”

I won’t do the hand bump, either. Michelle Obama may do it, but not me. They’re doing that to me because they probably still see me as a man, like, “What’s up, bro!”

There was a boy at the house party; he was like a rocker boy who called everyone dude. With me you have to walk on eggshells with that word. I take it very defensively — especially when there’s alcohol involved at the party.

When I was drinking he called me dude and I took it the wrong way. I told him, “Don’t call me dude, ’cause I’m not a boy.” And he was like, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to help you out.” I was really drunk.

I was with my friend Hoay because we still hang out; we talk all the time. So the rocker went up to Hoay and said, “You need to watch out for him.” Him being me.

I got up out of my seat and said, “Don’t call me dude!” and I put my hands around his neck and started backing him up against the wall. Everybody was pulling me off him.

“Well, people gotta learn,” I said. I mean people are not going to learn anything if there is no consequence to it. If you’re nice to people, they’re not going to take you serious.

The next day, he told me that he didn’t mean to call me him or dude or anything like that. It’s just that he wasn’t used to me. I’m not around him much.

I saw the rocker again at the next house party. He said, “Hey, Christina, how are you?” He was being nice to me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

Sometimes I see Matthew in the mirror. Sometimes, on my lazy days, when I’m just lounging around the house with no makeup on or anything, I see him.

Once I put on my boyfriend’s clothes to see what it was like. I pulled my hair up and put on his do-rag. All I could see was my face. I must admit I was very happy with what I saw in the mirror. Although I had on boys’ clothes, I still looked super feminine. I had my breasts, and my hips were poking through the sides of his jeans. My boyfriend told me that I looked like a lesbian; I didn’t look like a boy at all. He can’t imagine me as a boy. I was so happy about that.

“Hold on! Hold on! I have something to say,” Christina’s mom says. “After all, I’m the one who had the problem with this.”

Christina and Jonathan are my children, and I love my children regardless. I would never throw them out into the street like some parents do. Some families throw their kids out and they get into prostitution and they wind up dead. I would never, ever do that. I told them, “Baby, not for nothing, I’m glad that you guys are proud to be gay or transsexual. But you can’t let people know.” I had a lot of learning to do.

Christina was always very sensitive. I couldn’t yell at her the way I yell at my other sons, Elvin and Jonathan. She was crying all the time! All the time!

Jonathan was wearing women’s clothes long before Christina came out transgender. He was cross-dressing. That was very hard for me. I said, “Okay, Jonathan, you are gay, but you don’t need to dress like a woman.”

My next-door neighbor told me that she saw Jonathan dressed as a woman outside. When I confronted him, he said, “No, Mom, not me. I never dressed outside.”

I thought that was a phase he was going through, because after a while he stopped that altogether. Right now he’s very masculine. He works out; he’s very husky.

I was telling Jonathan, I said, “Jonathan, do you think Matthew — that was Christina’s name — is gay also?”

As a child, Christina didn’t tell me much about how she felt. I found out that she was transsexual the second year of high school, when she was sixteen. That’s when I noticed certain things about her and I actually thought that she was gay. Her movements — she was acting different — the way she was walking, the things that she liked, and she started wearing makeup.

She said that she wore makeup because she was breaking out a lot. She said that she was covering up her acne. She was going through puberty. But the truth was, she was transitioning. I had no idea.

Matthew was at Mount Saint Michael’s, and that was a problem. He was letting his hair grow long. I thought that he was gay, like my other son.

One time I found him crying. I said, “It’s okay, it’s okay. I know that you’re gay.”

That was shocking to me. I didn’t know what that was. “What do you mean, you feel like a girl inside?”

I spoke to my family about it. They were even more in shock than I was. Nobody exactly knew what a transsexual was. I have a huge family, seven sisters and three brothers. One of my sisters said, “Wanda, I thought Matthew was gay. I saw some indications. I saw the way Matthew moved.” At the time he was obese; he was very obese. She’s still a big girl. So I just thought she had her little moves because obese people tend to move in a certain way.

Most of my family accepts Matthew as Christina. But my older brother in particular does not accept her because he’s religious. He thinks there’s a bad spirit in both my children, that there’s no such thing as being born that way. I don’t want to disrespect my brother, but I tell my mother, “Ma, did you see that program on the Spanish channel about transgender? That they are born this way?” Christina doesn’t want to see her uncle.

I worry about her when she’s not home. She’ll call me on the phone, crying, “Mom, I got into this situation!”

We live in a six-building complex. Once she called me: “Mom, some guy punched me in the face!”

“‘Yes, Mom, I’m fine.’ ” She called the police. I believe she pressed charges. My son started looking for the guy. A few weeks later, I was coming out of my building and saw a whole bunch of men. I said to myself, Maybe that’s one of the guys who attacked my daughter. I just walked between them and said, “I want to know who attacked my daughter. Be a man and come out.”

One man was looking down, and I had a feeling it was him. I told him off. I said, “What is it your business that my daughter is who she is? My daughter goes to college. My daughter works. My daughter goes to an internship. My daughter isn’t bothering anybody. Have you ever seen her bother anybody here? Why is this your business?”

“How dare you! How dare you attack my child! What has she done to you?” And I started criticizing him. I said, “Look at you! Are you jealous of my child? My child as a man and as a woman is handsome and beautiful.”

I think he was a foreigner. I said, “You’re not from here, right? In America people are used to this. There are gays, there are lesbians, there’s transgender. There are all kinds.”

The other guys said, “Don’t worry, ma’am. From now on, we’re going to have respect for her. We’re going to watch out for her.”

And yet there’s always one issue or another that can pop up at any moment and spoil the day.

When Christina got her breast implants, I was relieved because she looked more like a woman. But when I’m in the train with her, I still hear little kids say, “Mom, is that a man or a woman?” I don’t want to hear that. I sometimes have to remind her not to show her Adam’s apple, and that’s so sad. I don’t want to have to remind her to keep her chin down.

Christina’s very intelligent; she can understand difficult things. But something simple? She can’t do it. I tried to teach Christina how to wash her clothes. I tried to teach her how to cook. “I don’t want to, Mom.” I think she’s a little lazy about things like that. But as for makeup, she teaches me. She’ll do my hair. Being that she’s into fashion, it comes natural.

I go to her and say, “Christina, how does this look? Should I do this? Should I do that?” And she tells me.

It’s different having a daughter. The other day I bought dye to color my hair. When I went to look for the dye, it was not there. I said to myself, I know I’m not going crazy. I know I bought the dye. Well, guess who took my dye?

She dyes her hair all the time. I got angry with her. I said, “Baby — I call her baby — you can’t be doing this to me. I was getting ready to dye my hair, and you took my dye.” She takes my mousse. Everything is in her room.

But then she takes off her weave and leaves it on my bed. That part I don’t like about having a daughter. She’s very messy. She wasn’t messy as a boy. You should see her room. No, it’s too embarrassing.

I took Jonathan’s situation a lot harder than Christina’s because it was new to me. Jonathan’s situation helped me with Christina. Jonathan was only thirteen years old when he came out of the closet. I feel bad to this day that the first words that came out of my mouth were “That’s disgusting!”

I insulted him so bad. That was a horrible thing to do. I have apologized to him. I hope he knows how sorry I am.

When Jonathan started making his little gay moves, we had a problem. We went to counseling and we used to argue right there. My issues were he was doing the hand movements and talking like gay people. I said, “You know what? The day before you told me you were gay, you sounded like a normal teenage boy. All of a sudden, one day later, you’re sounding like gay people. You’re moving like gay people. I don’t want you to do that. I don’t want it because you’ll be in danger. You’ll get attacked.”

He argued with me. “No, this is who I am and this is how I move.” I fought so much with him about that.

Jonathan was at Mount Saint Michael’s too, but he couldn’t take it. He purposefully failed his classes to get thrown out. So I moved him to a school for gay, lesbian, and transgender students. In the beginning it was rough for me. I had to go to parent-teacher conferences. I did not want to be there. I was still not used to the idea of a gay son. There were guys dressing up like girls, and I would give them dirty looks. They would act flamboyant, and it would kill me. I felt it was not necessary. Oh my god, they’re not girls, why are they acting this way?

Jonathan would bring flamboyant boys home, and that would kill me too. Now I accept anyone who comes to my home. I love them because I know they don’t get enough love from their parents.

Jonathan was overweight, and he started going to the gym. Now he’s a body builder, and very good-looking. Very good-looking.

Don’t be like I was with Jonathan. Don’t say horrible things to your child. That will haunt me till the day I die. Hug your children. Hug them.

Christina’s mom cries softly. “I’m sorry,” she says, wiping away tears.

I learned through Christina. I didn’t read a book or call anyone for information. I listened to my daughter. And I learned by letting her be.