Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out

On a sunny spring day in June, Mariah, nineteen, arrives at the diner exactly on time. Her close-cropped, curly black hair and olive-almond skin surrounds the bone structure of a model. Eyes, big and round, remind me of a Madonna in a Renaissance painting. I wish I had brought along my professional camera rather than the click-click sleeping somewhere in my bag.

This day Mariah is wearing a pale-pink man-tailored shirt and khaki pants. “I’m dressing gender neutral,” she tells me while we walk to a booth in the back of the restaurant, “because I’m not comfortable with my body. I don’t want my picture in the book. I’m telling the truth about my life because I think you should know about me and my community. But I’m not ready for people to see me.”

Oh, no! I say to myself, hoping against hope that she will change her mind. We find an empty booth and order lunch.

Mariah’s voice is like honey sliding down a spoon. “My social worker — we usually make jokes — she says, ‘You talk like woman, you act like woman, you look like woman, but you eat like man.’”

Mariah goes on to say that she is not in a good place. “I’m not a success story right now. I’m just starting to transition my name to Mariah. I want to go to college and live in the city. Anywhere but Long Island! I have too much bad history in Long Island. I want to go somewhere where nobody knows me.”

Although she is taking her hormone shots every two weeks, Mariah does not consider her transition effective. “I know I will never have a period, I will never have a uterus, I will never have fallopian tubes, and I will never have ovaries. I will never have those things, so technically I will never be a woman. What’s the point of having a vagina when I can’t have those things? I wanted to experience what real women like you experience. Inserting a tampon. Of course, I can insert a tampon when I get a vagina, but what’s the use of it?”

“Believe me, it’s not so great,” I reply.

“Everybody says that,” Mariah says softly, smiling. “But you know, when it comes to us, it doesn’t matter if it feels great. It makes us feel real. It makes us feel like the real deal.”

My story is a little bit different. You may hear transgender people say that when they were little, they felt different; they were born a boy but felt like a girl. When I was little, I believed I actually was a girl. I really did. I didn’t know the difference between a boy and a girl. I noticed that kids dressed different and played different games. I didn’t think it was a gender thing, because I was a girl.

I’m biracial. My mother is black and Cherokee Indian, and my father is an immigrated Italian. My mother passed away when I was ten, but I’ll tell you more about that later. I never knew my father. I believe he’s still alive; he’s not in my life.

I lived with my mother and my grandmother, but I can’t say they raised me. Placement raised me. I’ve been in the system all my life. When I turned eighteen, I signed myself out. I’ll be twenty next month.

When I was four or five, I wore girl clothes. My grandmother took a lot of heat for it. It wasn’t her fault. It was my way of expressing who I was, because that’s who I thought I was.

Around the time I turned five, some guy on the street said, “Yo! You’re not supposed to be wearing those clothes.”

“Why not?” I always got defensive about this ’cause everyone was always telling me this.

A lot of people didn’t approve of me. My neighbors cursed out my family. “You’re raising a fucking boy! He’s supposed to be wearing fucking boy clothes, not fucking girl clothes. You should go to jail for this shit.” That’s what they were saying.

None of my friends teased me when I wore girls’ clothes. They were cool. There were things I liked doing as a boy, and there were things I like doing as a girl. As a boy, I liked to play outside, ride my bike, and get a little dirty. I liked cars. I was hyperactive. I liked to throw things. I never really liked action figures; I never liked to pretend with G.I. Joe, and this and that.

On the girls’ side, I liked Barbie dolls. I liked brushing their hair, braiding it. I liked to have pretend tea parties, being pretty, trying on makeup.

I grew up in a bad neighborhood. There was a lot of violence — not guns — knives. There was a lot of alcohol and drugs, but only when my mother and her friends were home. You learn what you see, so I used to fight a lot. I wasn’t a punk.

“Who’s a punk in kindergarten?” I ask, and we laugh at the notion.

My grandma’s short and fat and passive. She’s not the kind of person who will argue. She never spoke her mind. Like an old-fashioned woman, she kept her thoughts to herself. Don’t argue. Whatever is said is done. I don’t like that about her — it would make me mad.

She was a teacher for twenty years, and then she worked for the county for ten years. She has a master’s degree. It’s very weird. I don’t understand how she could be educated and end up in the ’hood, the ghetto, a poor neighborhood.

She was married once, long before I was born, but her husband died in a car crash. I think she was traumatized. Years later she adopted my mother.

About the time when most children started talking, Mariah did not talk at all. Social workers thought that she might be underdeveloped. Instead of going to public school, Mariah was sent to a special ed. school, Variety Child Learning Center, in Syosset, Long Island.

I didn’t like the school. I was trying to be myself, dressing the way I felt, and I was getting punished for it. The first day of school, my teacher looked at me, surprised, and I thought, “What is going on?”

She said, “You’re a boy. You’re not supposed to go to school like this. Don’t put on these clothes again! You’re not supposed to do this.”

She had a look, like, “What’s up with the parents?” I was thinking, Why is she looking at me like that?

I didn’t say nothing, but I continued to go to school the way I wanted. I used to like wearing these jellies. They looked like princess shoes, and I loved them.

I remember one day the teacher took me out of the classroom and pinched me hard. I didn’t like that. She said, “What’s going on with you? You’re a guy! Are your parents abusing you? Are you being raped? Are you being molested?”

As a five-year-old, I didn’t know what those words meant. She wouldn’t stop. “This is not right. You’re not supposed to be doing this. I can’t believe you’re doing this.” And she looked very sad, like I was her child.

She took me to another room and tried to force me to tell her what was going on. And she would pinch me more, trying to find answers. That was her way of interrogating me. I thought, Stop! Stop! Please stop! This is what I do. This is who I am.

Mariah says that her teachers could not control her, so they brought in psychologists and the social services department.

The teacher reported me to DSS (the Department of Social Services). We were under investigation. My grandma was charged with abuse and neglect for me wearing girl clothes, and I was placed in CPS (Child Protective Services).

Thinking back about it now, I can’t believe how something so simple as my clothes led to people thinking that I was being abused, that I was being molested. No one was forcing me to do nothing. My mother and grandmother also bought me boys’ clothes. And I would wear them. I mean, I liked being a boy, but I liked being a girl too.

You know, I think a lot of this was my fault. I wasn’t a kid who listened. I didn’t listen to nobody. And my grandma wasn’t the kind of person who would put her foot down and say, “No!” If I yelled and cried because I wanted something, she’d give it to me. That was my little secret — yelling. I would go into a temper tantrum, and eventually I got what I wanted.

My family found a way to edge me off girls’ clothes. They said, “Okay, if you go to school with boys’ clothes on, you can wear a little dress under it.”

So basically I had boys’ clothes on and a V-cut dress under it. Or I’d completely wear guy clothes and then little heels. I remember wearing my jellies with shorts.

When I turned six, my behavior became really bizarre. I began threatening people to get what I wanted. I would tell my grandmother, “If you don’t buy me this or that, I’ll run away!” I yelled and screamed and even threatened her with a knife. Can you believe that? She sent me to a doctor, who diagnosed me with ADD.

When Mariah was diagnosed with ADD, attention deficit disorder, she was put on Ritalin, the first of many prescribed drugs.

My mother had nothing to do with me. She was not in the picture. She was living in the house, but she’d go in and out. She didn’t pay attention to me. I thought she didn’t care about me.

I think the reason why I wore girls clothes, my mother’s clothes, was to have a bond with her. My mother was an alcoholic, she was on drugs, she was a prostitute, and she also had lupus. She taught me some things, but basically she left me with my grandmother. I wanted to have a bond with her, and I also wanted to be a girl. I loved the idea of being pretty, of being a princess. I loved the idea of Barbie and beauty. I just liked dresses! But a lot of people didn’t approve of it.

After Mariah threatened her grandmother with the knife, the social workers had her committed to a hospital. Her grandmother was grateful.

My grandmother thought I needed help. Help! Help! I was not being cared for. A person who isn’t cared for? Come on. Of course they’re going to act out.

There had to be an excuse to get help from the government. First they put me in a hospital. I was in my hospital clothes all day, a gown with an opening in the back. I liked that.

There was this girl there. I thought about that guy in my neighborhood telling me that girls have vaginas. I looked at her and thought, This must be a girl. So I went up to her and told her I liked her and she said she liked me. We started kissing. I picked up her skirt and looked in her underwear. “Where’s your dick?”

And I put my hand down there and felt this little hole-kind-of-thing. I got really scared and ran away. At the time, I thought girls must have had their dicks cut off. That’s what makes them a girl.

I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do. I sure didn’t hang around her no more. Then one day, when I was with my mother or my grandmother or maybe it was the social worker — I don’t remember — I said, “I want to have my dick cut off, because I want to be a girl.”

But then I got over that phase and thought, Nah, I don’t really want that. I want boy clothes. So I stayed with the gender I was born into, but I still had urges for girl clothes.

Still, I grew out my hair and had girl hairstyles. I would see a dress or a purse at the mall and force my grandmother to buy it. “You can put them on, but don’t go outside in them,” my grandmother would say. But I looked so pretty. I wanted to show people what I was doing.

The first or second grade is when things started getting pretty weird. I was seven at the time, living at home, and going to a new school in a black community. I’m not a racist, but when it comes to queer people, black people are very ghetto, as I would say. In my low-income community, people had no education and no jobs. They were grown-ups acting like children. The adults, not the children, made fun of me when I wore my wigs.

Mariah did not wear dresses outside, but she loved to go out wearing long hair, barrettes, and beads.

And I wore girl boots with heels too. Sometimes I wore stilettos that I took from my mother. I acted like I was beautiful. The kids wouldn’t say nothing ’cause I was a fighter and they was scared of me.

But the adults were not scared.

“You’re a little boy! What’s going on wit’ you? You’re not supposed to be wearing girl clothes. Take that shit off, boy.” And they’d laugh. Or when they’d see me, they were, like, “Come here, girl. See this!” and they’d start laughing.

I guess I had more courage than I have now. When I’m home now, I only wear boy clothes.

I was sexually mature. What I mean by sexually mature is that I knew about sex. From six up, I used to kiss other guys in my neighborhood, make out with them, and perform oral sex on them. I liked it. I used to love oral. And I touched their you-know-whats. We were really young, but that’s what we did.

I was making out with girls too. I used to love making out with girls ’cause everybody thought I was cool. Everybody was encouraging me. “Look, Frank’s not gay — he’s making out with a girl!” They wanted to know how the hell I learned to kiss like that. I didn’t know how I learned. It was pretty weird.

Guys used to hit on me — perverts — pedophiles. I’d see guys giving me a look, and it kinda creeped me out. They would touch themselves, saying, “Come here, sweetie.” Something told me not to go. I ran away. I ran to where there was a lot of people.

By then, I hated being a kid. I had a grown-up’s mind and thought I was an adult. I acted like I was an adult. I got into adult conversations. I wasn’t hanging around children no more; I was hanging around adults, people on the streets, neighbors, and my mom’s friends. I used to sing and dance for them. I danced like a girl and like a boy. I just loved performing. But it was very, very strange. Why would a child hang around with adults so much? Why would adults hang around me? DSS was concerned about that too.

DSS was so concerned that Mariah was taken away from her grandmother and put in a foster home for a month or so. Then she was moved to another foster home. Then another. Finally she was placed in a residential treatment center.

When I was about eight, I was put in placement. I went there ’cause there was a lot of allegations. The social workers reported that my behavior was getting really bizarre. They didn’t tell me this at the time. They only said it was because my mother or my grandma couldn’t take care of me. They said that my mother was neglectful. I didn’t think so. But they just took me away. It was horrible, really traumatizing.

This placement place was called ANDRUS Children’s Center, in Yonkers, New York. It used to be an orphanage, and then some rich man spent millions of dollars to turn it into a placement center. I forgot the whole story. It was an old English-style mansion that was built in the eighteen hundreds. It was beautiful. There were over twenty rooms. I had never seen anything so lavish.

There were fourteen or fifteen kids living in separate cottages, or units. A staff watched over us, but it wasn’t like prison. It was like a boarding school, but it was not a boarding school.

This was one of the best places I had ever been to. The things I did there I probably never would have done had I stayed with my grandmother, to tell you the truth. She didn’t have the money. She didn’t have resources. She didn’t have a car.

In placement, I couldn’t wear girls’ clothes and I actually accepted being a boy. I played sports and felt normal. But I always had these urges. I wanted long hair. I loved pretty dresses. I loved skirts.

I remember saying to myself, I have to grow my hair to look like a girl so boys will like me. Now, when I think back, I think, Did I really say that back then? Did my body, my soul, know what I was supposed to be?

At the time, though, Mariah accepted herself as a boy and fell in what she calls “kitty love” with another boy, Michael.

We were so close, like brothers. I don’t know if he’s gay — I haven’t seen him in years. We’d play kitty games, like, every time we took showers, we’d take off our clothes and put towels around us. Michael would rip off my towel. “Stop ripping off my towel!” He was really sneaky about this. I would get really mad.

Then he’d do it to some of the other kids, and I actually had a jealousy feeling. I keep thinking, What is this feeling? I didn’t know the word jealousy, only the feeling.

We would go on trips every day. We went ice-skating. I started biking. I saw animals in the zoo. We had a really good time.

Two staff members always went with us. One was Kathy, the recreation person, and the other was Franklin. He was Puerto Rican, and a lot of people told us we looked like each other ’cause I looked Spanish when I was a kid. And our names were almost the same, Frank and Franklin.

Because we all liked Kathy, anyone who Kathy liked, we liked. They were really good to us. No abuse. No abuse at all.

There was sex — what I would call curiosity sex. We were experimenting. Isn’t that what a kid does at that age?

Michael and I became roommates, and we got really close. We told each other things about our parents. His mother was a crackhead. I told him certain things about my parents. Because I was a private person, people thought I was very mysterious. But back then I didn’t know much about my family.

We’d share our clothes and share our CDs. At night, he used to get in bed with me and we’d kiss or hug each other.

Michael was a type-one diabetic. He had to test his blood, and he couldn’t eat certain things. He used to give himself his own needle. We kids thought that was cool. Most kids are scared of needles. It was really cool to see him give himself a needle ’cause none of us could do it. Michael was a popular kid. In a way, I was popular too, but I was very quiet, a shy person. The staff loved me.

My mother died in 2001, just before the World Trade Center. It was around my birthday, July 6. I thought, This is one bad birthday present.

This is where my belief in God comes in the picture. When my mom passed away and I was told the news, I was really sad. I thought of one person on the staff who I wanted to take me to the funeral. Her name was Marie, and she treated me like I was her son. I loved her. I asked for Marie, but she had already gone home. Then, for some reason, she came back. I thought that I must have a guardian angel. It was so weird: she wasn’t here, and all of a sudden, she appeared. I didn’t know how to process it at that time, so I thought it must be God sending me a guardian angel.

After the funeral, I was scared to sleep in my own room. By that time, Michael had been discharged and I had my own room. I even had my own bathroom and walk-in closet. I didn’t want to sleep where it was dark. I thought maybe I’d see my mother’s presence again, and it scared me. I slept in the hallway.

I had always been afraid of my mother. Once she almost killed me. I don’t know what I did to make her so mad. I always had an attitude, a bad mouth, a fresh mouth. I was really rude and snotty. I don’t know what I did, but she started throwing seven or eight beer bottles at me. One hit my back, one almost hit my head, and I was running for my life. She could have killed me. No one called the police, because the neighbors stopped her from trying to kill me. I still have a little scar on my back. What mother throws glass beer bottles at a child? Who does that?

I realized how weird my life was: wearing girl clothes, feeling I was a girl, thinking I was a girl. ANDRUS brought normalcy into my life. I didn’t mind being a boy. I liked being tough and playing sports. And I wasn’t scared of bugs. I felt like a cool kid. But still, I loved to watch someone’s hair being done. I loved looking at dresses. I accepted that I wasn’t supposed to do that, but I still fantasized about it.

I asked my teacher, “Why do girls call each other ‘girlfriends,’ but I can’t call my friends ‘boyfriends’?” I got in a little trouble for that.

The teacher sent me out of the room just because I asked that question. I didn’t think I was saying anything wrong. I thought I was being logical. I guess they knew my case and they didn’t want me to regress. They didn’t want me to go back to doing girls’ stuff. Stop him in his tracks! That’s the only explanation. Why would they send me to a time-out room for this?

When I turned eleven, I left ANDRUS and went home to live with my grandma. To tell the truth, I was a monster at the time. I was really frustrated. I missed being at ANDRUS, where I had friends, where it felt like I had family. At home, I didn’t have no brothers. I didn’t have no sisters. It was just me and my grandmother.

At my new school, people started picking on me. I never dealt with that before. It was the first time I felt lonely. That’s a really hard feeling. I felt that everybody hated me. It made me depressed. It made me sad. It made me feel creepy. So I started acting out, cursing my grandmother again.

School made Mariah feel like a loser, so she acted like a loser.

I just started going off. Have you ever heard of kids who used to get picked on, whatever, and they became psychopaths? That wasn’t me. I never became a psychopath. But I did go berserk. I made threats. I wanted to hurt their feelings. I was mad.

I threatened my teacher. To tell the truth, I actually pushed her to the floor — and she was pregnant. I know that was bad of me. I regret it. But she crossed the line. She was in my face all the time. She said that I threatened to blow up the school. This was after 9/11, so when a kid said that back then, it was a big deal. They called the police on me and made it seem I was a terrorist. I did say I wanted to set the school on fire and blow it up. But I was mad. I would never actually do it. I ended up back in the system.

First they sent me to a hospital, where I was diagnosed as a “bipolar, clinical psychopath with narcissistic tendencies.” Can you believe that? That’s crazy!

There were allegations that I was abusive, not good in school. The report said that I literally set the school on fire. I never did that! If I had set the school on fire, I would have been in jail. Come on! That’s really a heinous crime, no matter how old you are. I didn’t do that. I was just really mad.

At Nassau University Medical Center, a psychiatric center, Mariah was put on all kinds of medications.

It was horrible. It was like being at a cuckoo house. I was a zombie. The meds made me think slow, move slow. I had been one of the bright kids in my class. I’m not a genius, but I have good insights, and if I study, I’m really good. The medicine delayed my concentration. I couldn’t do math. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t run. The medicine made me flip out.

I was not crazy. I knew it, but they didn’t know it. And I was still acting up, still cursing people, and they go by your behavior.

When Mariah turned twelve, she was placed in a state hospital called Sagamore. She started gaining weight, lots and lots of weight.

She was moved to yet another placement center, currently called MercyFirst, in Syosset, Long Island. At the time it was Saint Mary’s Children’s Center. Mariah hated that place. And then another weird thing happened.

I was starting to look like a girl. I had a girl’s face and a high-pitched voice. My chest wasn’t like a man’s chest. I was growing women’s boobs with large areolae. People would ask me if I was a girl, and I used to get mad.

Everybody else went from being a boy to being a man. It seemed like I was turning from being a boy to being a woman. Personally, I think it was all the medicines I was on. I was on a whole lot of meds.

Everybody else was getting deeper voices. Everybody else was getting facial hair. Everybody else was getting bigger penises.

Now I’m glad my penis is small. I’ve never even used it. But at the time, I wanted it to be big because I wanted to be with a girl. I told myself, If I had a big dick, I’d be with a girl.

I was still very popular. The staff loved me, and the kids loved me. But I was very emotional. I was a drama queen, crying all the time. I became a crybaby, clinging like a little boy to its mother — or a little girl.

I didn’t like that about me. I tried my hardest to be a guy again. I played football and ran track. I tried to lose weight. No matter how hard I tried to be a guy, I looked like a girl. I was really pissed off.

Somebody said that if you drink liquor, you get a lower voice. I was drinking. It’s hard to drink liquor when you’re thirteen.

“Smoke cigarettes. It will make you have a deep voice,” a friend told me. I was smoking cigarettes back to back to back to back. It didn’t even work. It kinda lowered my voice a little. But I can’t scream. I used to be able to scream, but I can’t scream no more, so I guess it had a little effect.

The many medications made Mariah lethargic and slow-witted. Another patient there took advantage of her weakened state.

This guy got me to perform oral sex on him. I thought I was doing the right thing by performing on him. But I wasn’t. He was just abusing me. He had total mind control over me. He didn’t have to get physical with me; he just knew where to hit me where it hurts emotionally.

We finally got caught in the act, and I was very happy because I wanted it to stop. I think the directors were worried that they could get sued because they kept telling me it was consensual. It wasn’t consensual at all. But I just wanted it to end. I wanted them to stop talking about it, so I agreed.

Afterward, that guy told everybody on campus about us, and they all thought I was this big old homo. Other kids tried to have sex with me. Other kids wanted to abuse me. I was so confused. I was mad at myself, slow because of the medication, and I didn’t know what to do.

When Mariah turned fourteen, she was still a resident at MercyFirst. She was attending summer school and had begun a summer job. Because she had no choice in an institution, she presented as male, but everybody thought of her as female. Although she had lost a lot of weight, she was quite chubby.

Her body was curvy. The other students liked her, and she was feeling very good about herself.

A lot of boys were hitting on her, as if they somehow understood that she was indeed a girl.

I was the most popular girl on campus. I started home visits. I went home every weekend, Friday to Sunday. It seemed like everything was going good for me. I always wanted to go home, but I knew in reality home wasn’t good for me. The only reason I wanted to go home was that was all I knew — that was my home.

In May, a new resident arrived. His name was Victor, Victor from Brooklyn.

There was an event going on and I was looking at him, going, Wow, he’s cute. I really liked him. I would go up to him and talk to him and find a reason to be next to him. Our cottages were next to each other, and I remember looking at him through the window. I would look at him and smile, and he would smile back at me. I would skip school and go to the gym just to be around him, just to talk to him. I wanted to be his girlfriend. It didn’t seem odd or quirky; it was natural. I was confident. I don’t know where that came from because I didn’t have a lot of confidence at the time.

Although they never had a physical relationship, Victor knew that Mariah was interested.

Well, one time he approached me. He said, “I’m told that you’re really good at head.” I was freaked out. I was excited. I was like, “Oh, my God!”

I said, “I would, but I have to go to work right now. When I come back, I will do it.”

I remember walking with my work group and thinking, “Oh, my God, he wants to . . . you know . . . with me.” I had butterflies in my stomach.

When I came back, I waited and waited for him. When I found him, I asked him if he wanted to do it, but he said, “I was joking.”

And yet Mariah felt that they shared a strong connection. By the end of the summer, Victor was released from MercyFirst.

It could have happened if he had stayed there longer, and if I had made a move. But I was really nervous at the time. I wasn’t how I am now. I was very shy. He was an older guy. He was seventeen or eighteen, and I was fourteen. I always felt that he was out of my league ’cause he was this really cute guy and I was this ugly, fat thing. Any girl could have had him.

After Victor left, a Mariah Carey album was playing. There was this song, “We Belong Together.” Music never did it for me before, but when “We Belong Together” came on, I thought, Oh, my God! Mariah Carey gets it. That song talked to me. I love Mariah Carey. I’m a big fan.

Mariah Carey is so beautiful, and I remember thinking, I want to look like that. I went into my room and it suddenly clicked to me, Frank, you’re bisexual.

I’m bisexual? It was like the wind blew in and hit me that I’m bisexual. I had a really good friend on staff at that time. Her name was Ruth. I went to see her.

“Miss Ruth, I think I’m bisexual, but don’t tell anybody — I’m still new to it.” See, I wasn’t the type to be in the closet. I always told people who I was.

Once I was released from MercyFirst and moved home, I started acting more like a girl. I started losing weight. I started dancing. I wanted a straight guy. I fantasized that I was out with a sexy guy.

When I turned fifteen, I stopped taking my medication and started having panic attacks. I got into another fight with my grandma. I became very aggressive and severely depressed. Basically I was out of control — again.

I also got into a fight with some kid and broke a beer bottle on his head. He needed stitches. I got charged. I went to a juvenile detention center, then back to MercyFirst.

There was a staff woman there I fell in love with. Her name was Karen, and I used to look up to her. She had a very big butt. I used to target her. I’d curse at her. It wasn’t because I hated her — I really liked her — I wanted her to be a part of my life.

I fantasized that I was a beautiful woman. I fantasized that I was Mariah Carey.

At first I changed my name to Monica because that was my mom’s name. I guess I wanted her to be part of me. I fantasized that I was this very big star, a pop singer. I was Lady Gaga, and everybody loved my music.

I was open about being gay, but I wasn’t open about being trans. To tell the truth, I didn’t know the word. I knew that I wanted to be a girl. I knew that I wanted to be popular. I knew that I wanted to be cute. But I wasn’t any of those things. I was actually pretty much a loser. I thought I was the only one in the world that was going through this. I didn’t know about hormones yet. I didn’t know what SRS was — sex reassignment surgery. I didn’t know what the procedure was.

I started reading and hearing about other people like me. I was actually jealous. I thought I was the only one feeling like this. Hey, how the hell you feeling like that? I was mad about that.

It was funny and stupid at the same time, but I really wanted to feel special. How can you be feeling the same things I’m feeling? And it made me really mad, like, I’m not special after all.

I was sent to a new placement center, in Pennsylvania, where I worked with a good therapist. I told her I wanted to be a girl. She was an excellent social worker, one of the best I had had so far. She told me to write everything I felt in a journal. I wrote down all my fantasies. I don’t think she wanted me to transition into girl; she wanted me to look inside myself, more than the outside of myself.

As I learned more, it made me feel sad, like I had a disorder. Transsexual. Even the name sounded weird to me. It was like I’m not born who I am; I have to transition to be who I am.

A lot of transgender girls feel that they look like a boy and they try to fix it. The thing is, real beauty comes from the inside. You could be the most passable trans woman ever. Real beauty from the inside! And that’s what the therapist was basically telling me.

But then, at sixteen, guess what happened? I started going through male puberty. My stomach started changing. My head structure started changing. My legs started changing. My face. My eyes. I started getting facial hair.

The other kids were confused too. They looked at my face and asked, “What is this?”

They were laughing at me. They weren’t laughing at me to make fun of me. They knew I liked to be feminine.

I put Nair on my face. Stupid! It tells you on the bottle not to do it. But I put Nair on my face and it burnt me. Two weeks later, I noticed hair coming in, again, especially around my mustache.

I put Nair on again to remove it, but it started coming in stronger. I never had a full beard, but hairs were coming out all over and I was becoming more masculine.

What’s going on with me? When I wanted to be a man, I looked like a woman. Now, when I want to be a woman, I’m turning into a man. Why?

I acted feminine ’cause I wanted to be a girl. I couldn’t picture myself as a guy. When I was with a guy, it wasn’t me being a guy with another guy. It was me being a girl with a guy. It was too confusing to tell everybody that, so the easiest thing to say was, “I’m gay.”

I think it must be difficult for trans men who like guys. Most gay guys don’t like vaginas. Have you ever seen an enlarged clitoris? It looks a little like a little penis. Most of the time gay guys aren’t interested in that.

The guys I’m interested in are down-lows, DLs. That’s somebody that says they are not gay but participates in gay activities, or are confused. Down-lows are basically gay guys still in the closet. They’re people who live double lives or deny they are gay. Those are the guys I went out with.

A lot of people say I’m a dyke. I guess that’s because I have feminine features but I wear guy clothes. I’m not ready to wear girl clothes yet. I live in a neighborhood that’s not too accepting. And a lot of people know me too well for me to transition fully.

A lot of older transgender people say it’s inside beauty that counts. And, you know, I usually agree with that. But we’re young. We look at the magazines and we want to look like that. I want to look like Mariah Carey. She’s black and white, just like me. I look up to her.

Transition starts when you feel that you’re a woman physically, mentally, and emotionally. You fantasize about it. You research it. You start wearing women’s clothes. Then you start looking into hormones. That’s really transitioning.

I’m taking transition step by step. I told some people: my aunt, my cousins. I told my good neighbor. My grandma knows. She prefers me being a guy. But she can’t change how I feel.

I’ve been on hormones for seven months. I think the hormones make me hungrier. Otherwise, I haven’t noticed a big change. Well, maybe my skin is softer; my muscles are very soft, very flabby. I always had big breasts, so that’s no change. I don’t get erections as much as I used to. I never did much, anyway, because I never really liked my penis. I have a lot of stretch marks — my whole butt is one big old fat stretch mark. I have stretch marks on my hips, my thighs. It’s terrible. I have to go to the gym. Actually, that’s the estrogen at work.

With hormones, my facial hair doesn’t grow back as fast as it used to. I had laser on my face — only four sessions and it worked pretty good.

Ever since I transitioned and accepted that I’m a girl, I’ve been attracted to girls. But they say that’s not weird ’cause gender has nothing to do with sexuality.

I want people to know what I went through. I want people going through the same thing to know they are not alone. Transition? Everyone goes through one kind of transition or another. We go through transitions every day. Except mine is maybe a little more extreme. I’m not at the end of my transition. I’m barely at the beginning.