Okay, so here’s the setup for a joke:
I’m sitting on a bench, at a wrestling meet, all alone. And it’s the conference finals, and there’s a decent amount of cheering and applause, which is rare for a meet, and a girl is up in the stands holding a giant sign with my name on it, and I know the girl, and I’m attracted to the girl, but she’s the girlfriend of a teammate, so let’s not think about her except to say her name is Shannon, and she’s one of the most excellent people I know.
But there’s another girl in the room, the only other girl who’s competing, and she’s sitting at the other end of the bleachers, with her mom and a clutch of friends, and all afternoon we’ve sort of ignored each other. I’ve wrestled this other girl maybe twice in my life—she’s pinned me both times—and Denise is, like, a wrestling prodigy from this other school, Groveland Day. In our weight bracket, it’s about a quarter girls, but the guys almost always win—except against her. When she won this final last year, it was only after three guys in a row forfeited their match instead of wrestling her, and it sucked, because everyone knew they would’ve lost.
Nobody has asked me, How do you feel about being the only other girl here?
I could imagine a lot of ways the conversation would go. Like maybe they’d say, Isn’t it great you short-circuited all the trans-in-sports stuff by competing in one of the extremely few sports where girls compete directly against guys?
Or they could say, Isn’t it weird that after starting hormones, which usually hurt your muscle development and your ability to compete, you suddenly got way, way, way better at this sport? Like, what’s up with that?
Or they could say, Do you feel weird that if you win, it won’t be a girl beating a girl, it’ll be a trans girl beating a girl? And that people won’t know what to think?
It’s an absurd situation, I have to admit. Honestly, I admire trans girls who compete in girls’ sports. I have no idea what that would be like: I hardly know any other girls—just Shannon, and even that’s only because she’s sort of adopted me, or something. Maybe I should be offended—I’m not a puppy! But actually I kind of like it.
What’s nice about being the only trans girl at an all-boys Catholic school is that nobody ever talks to you. Like, ever. Not to laugh, not to tease, not to mock. You don’t even get called on in class.
When I mention it to people who don’t know Catholic schools, they’re like wait, why did they let you stay at the school if you’re a girl now? And I shrug and say, well, they’re saying they’re doing it for my benefit, to not disrupt my education, since I only have a year left. But really, in their hearts, they just don’t think I’m actually a girl. It’s not just Catholic schools that’re like this—women’s colleges are radical/progressive as hell, but lots of them still don’t have a problem admitting trans boys (though they’re pretty shy about trans girls. I thought about applying to Smith, but got embarrassed at them maybe being like, Wait a second, you were a boy until like six months ago?).
I’m here because St. Ignatius is so small that every high schooler has to take a sport. I chose wrestling because … it’s the only sport where both girls and boys compete.
Of course, my parents won’t believe that’s true. They’re like, You had no idea, you didn’t know, when you were eleven, and you started wrestling, that you were trans.
And I guess that’s true, but still, I also knew that if I had to do any other sport, I’d die. Like, fall into a pit and pass away.
The thing that’s nice is nobody else knows I’m pretty sure I’m gonna win my weight class. And matches in our weight class are held kinda late, so we’ll have a lot of other winners crowned by then to take away the spotlight. I’ll pin my last guy, and then I’ll run off, and get out before anyone notices what happened.
Another nice thing is there’s only three other guys from my school who qualified. And unlike at a meet, they don’t feel the need to sit with me.
So I’m sitting here alone, in the sweat and damp, watching people writhe on mats, slap the ground, trying not to look to my right. And then there’s a hand on my back.
“Hey,” Shannon says. “I was waving, why didn’t you look?”
“Oh,” I say. “Sorry. I’m focused.”
“Are you excited?!”
She’s a year younger, and she’s on the bleacher next to me, with the sign awkwardly propped against her knee, and she came straight from school, so she’s in plaid skirt and knee socks, and I can’t look directly at her without shaking: It feels very Beauty and the Beast.
“Really, really, nervous.”
“Why?!” she says.
“Err, because it’s sports? People are nervous before sports.”
“But you’re already accepted to college! And you don’t even need this. It’s just extra!”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just really want to win.”
“You will!” she said. “Then you can wrestle in college, too, and maybe the Olympics and be superfamous!”
“Uhh no,” I said. “I’m never gonna do this again.”
“What? Why not? You’re so good!”
“Because it’s awkward. I just want to be a girl, and that can’t ever happen if I play sports. Like, wrestling was my only chance, and even here it’s weird.”
“It’s not weird!” she said. “You have a gift! You can’t let that go. Come on! Promise, promise, promise me you won’t stop!”
I imagine she’s going to hug me, but she doesn’t. Still, she’s all smiles, and her hair shakes when she tosses her head. And now another voice pulls me up from my shoes.
“Hey.” The voice is deep. It’s her boyfriend, James, who also goes to my school. “What’s going on?”
“Oh hey,” she says. “Just hyping up Maya.”
“Cool, cool,” James says. “How’s it going?”
“Uhh, good.”
“I can’t believe they gave you the bid,” he says. “Have you had a match yet?”
“I have Denise up first, since she’s the top seed.”
“Huh, but she’ll probably beat you, right?”
“Probably.”
“Hey!” Shannon says. “Why’re you trying to rattle her?”
“What? You’ve gotten pinned by a bunch of girls.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “Or at least, none this year.”
“Well, yeah, this year, but before that…”
The thing that people can’t understand is the way coming out affects you psychologically. Like, my life is objectively terrible. My school is basically like, We’ll call you by your new name and pronouns, but otherwise we’ll pretend you don’t exist when we talk about how we educate fine young Christian gentlemen or begin every class with “Hello, gentlemen.” My existence was, essentially, a problem. I complicated every discussion at the school. The whole reason it existed was to educate young men. Most of my friends had stopped talking to me. My parents were afraid to ask how I was doing. But I was still happier than I’d ever been. It’s like something from a cheesy movie: Embracing my true self was worth any cost. In a way, transphobia is a gift, because the moment I started going by a new name, wearing my new clothes, taking the hormones, I was like, I am happier than I’ve ever been, and there’s no way this would be true—given all the other crap that fell down upon me—if I wasn’t actually trans.
And over the summer, because nobody was talking to me, I just trained. It’s that simple. Something changed inside of me. You know, true defeat is something most good wrestlers have never experienced: They’ve been winners all their lives. They’ve never known what it was like to be smaller, weaker, to be pinned over and over, to be on the team just to stop us from accumulating forfeits. And that experience with defeat, I think it actually helps you—it teaches you to fight with everything you have.
It sounds crazy, but it all just … came together. I got good, I caught fire. I expected people to notice, and I guess they did, but see above re: people never talking to me.
“No, he’s right,” I say. “From his perspective, I can see how he’d think…” I shrugged.
I’d gotten the wild-card spot in our conference championship, probably so they’d avoid a repeat of last year’s embarrassing story, when a bunch of guys refused to compete against Denise. That’d been bad. It’d made national news.
“You gonna come see my match?” he says.
“Sure, sure,” Shannon says. “Good luck, Maya.”
“Thanks!”
I sneak a glance as she walks away, see the back of her knees, and then I freeze.
Because now I see the other girl: I see Denise. She’s standing in the doorway, by herself, away from the usual group: She’s short—which helps in wrestling—and has broad arms and legs, and even without a mouth guard, her chin and teeth jut out and she looks almost ancient, eternal. To be honest, I’d never thought much about her before today—she was just this girl who wrestled on the same circuit who’d beaten me once or twice.
“H-hey,” I say, waving at her.
She looks at me, and stomps over. “Hey,” she says.
“Uhh, hey.”
“Hey.”
“So we’re gonna be, like, wrestling. Soon,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. “You’re Maya? From the boys’ school?”
“But I was Raghav, before, I mean.”
“So…? What did you want?”
“Uhhh…” I gulp and take a breath. And she’s on her phone, she’s waving at the girls who’ve come along with her, and at her mom, and I’m looking at my feet, thinking, Wow, I’ve been living in a fantasy land, thinking I’m gonna beat this person when I’m literally scared to even look at her.
So I raise my voice a bit and I say, “H-hey, wh—sh-shouldn’t you be more polite?”
Her eyes go up and down, across from my body, and for a second they’re studying my knees. There’s a big cheer from the stands, and she turns, grimacing. “I missed it,” she said. “There’s a thing Cowell does, when he pins someone … I came over here to look.”
“Why do you care?” I say. “He’s not in our weight class?”
Then her eyes narrow. “Why do I care? Uhh, why do you think? Because I want to get better. What’re you even doing here?”
“Uhh … I got the wild-card spot,” I say. “You’re, like, obviously better than me. You’ve beaten me.”
“Yeah, well,” she says. “I’ve beaten guys before, whatever.”
I smile at her. And this is what I signed up for, by choosing wrestling. I could’ve chosen another sport, or not played one at all—since my school doesn’t have one for girls. But I chose this, just for that reason, so it wouldn’t matter what hormones I took or what they did to my muscle mass. And the joke is, I still started winning, even against boys, and that, you know, theoretically, this ought to be really exciting for people. They ought to be like, holy crap, when trans girls do better after hormones, maybe—you know—maybe it means something. Maybe it’s like they’ve had these lead weights strapped to them their whole lives, and the moment they get those weights off, they’re like Superman under the yellow sun: suddenly superpowered in comparison to ordinary people.
“You won’t beat me,” I say.
“I’ve done it before,” she says.
“Not this time.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” she says.
“You know, if you won—if you beat me—I wouldn’t be a dick, like you’re being.”
“Well, pat yourself on the back, then.”
And with that she goes back to the rest of her friends, and I get it. She’s had tough times, she worked hard all through high school to become a champion. Her dad was a wrestling superstar, but even he thought it was a little weird for her to pick this sport. (I read the interviews she did last year, after she won.)
When I win, I wonder if there’ll be interviews, if anyone will care, if even my parents or my friends—well, aside from Shannon—will notice. Whether it’ll get announced at school, whether my parents will pat me on the back, or if instead everyone will be totally weird, will ignore it, just like they’ve ignored all my other wins this year.
And if I let myself think about it, then, sure, it sucked. I’d done so much to keep myself out of the way. I’d played this sport, where my gender didn’t matter (theoretically). And I’d stayed at a school that barred people of my gender entirely, all so who I am and who I was wouldn’t bother anybody—so they could see me as me, instead of as a gender identity. Just like my mom said: “The kids at St. Ignatius already know you—at any other school you’d just be the trans girl.”
And none of it mattered. I’m still a problem. They still have no way of understanding me, of seeing me as a person, who might be good at something in her own right.
You’d think, you know, you’d think that I’d be depressed—I guess you’re supposed to be, if everyone ignores you, and if walking into school each day with a bunch of boys, getting misgendered by your teachers, having them all say “Now, boys” or “Settle down, boys” or “All you boys are such a credit to this freaking school for boys,” and then not even having anyone else look in your direction, not even having them notice, or think, wow, maybe there’s something wrong with this. You’d think a girl would get depressed, if when she came out, her parents cut her a deal, saying you can go on hormones if, and only if, you don’t switch schools (I guess they thought it was just a phase, and that I wasn’t serious or something). You’d think a person would be depressed if they woke in silence, drove to school in silence, spent the day in silence, even when their hand was raised.
But I’m not. I’d be entitled to it, if I was. I’d be entitled to kick over things and cuss people out. I’d be entitled to a lot. But the weird thing is I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
Not that I forgive those people, of course. I’ll remember it. I don’t love my parents anymore, if I ever did. And I don’t respect those teachers or those other kids. And Denise? I don’t respect her either now. They’ve all done a terrible thing, and they might not ever realize it—they probably won’t—they’ll probably go home and say, That competition was unfair. Something about hormones gave her superstrength. And … and … she just got the wild-card bid because she’s trans. My parents will look at where I got into college, and they’ll look at how I’m doing, and they’ll say, Oh, so keeping her in that school turned out pretty well! And my school will think, Wow, we’re so inclusive, I guess all-boys education is still relevant in this day. And they’ll all be wrong, though they’ll never admit it.
So don’t think I forgive them. But … I’m still happy as hell. Because before this year, I’d never done it before. I’d never worked hard, I’d never trained, I’d never won a single thing. And that’s something no one can take away.
Okay, so if that was the setup, then here’s the punch line: At the start of our match, I stood across the mat, nervous, my arms and legs tingling, my heart thumping, and with this crazy, desperate need to pee. Denise faced me, her face set, and her dad was off to the side, cheering for her, growling. It felt like the whole room was cheering for her, and I only had one girl high up in the stands waving her sign: LET’S GO MAYA. And even though my heart was going, and my head was buzzing, I started to smile.
She swarmed out, on me fast, and then I was on my back, flipped down and crumpled up. I arched my back instinctively, and she worked my body like a machine, pushing my limbs out of the way, sweeping my legs, almost like a math problem, subtracting each point of support so I’d fall. And I’d felt this a bunch of times before in my life, but there were new muscles now in my stomach and chest, so I tensed up, and I exploded, and I flipped, and then she was under me, and I grinned savagely. And I had her by the shoulders, her neck shuddering, her hair escaping from the headpiece, and she couldn’t move. Her body was locked into place. And then the count was over, and it was done.
I stood on the mat, and I stamped my feet, and I waved my arms, and the stands for the first time noticed me—they booed. An opposing mom said I shouldn’t be such a showboat.
But at that moment Shannon ran up to me and jumped into my arms, and I whirled her around, and then she danced around the gym.
None of the other guys forfeited for me, like they had last year for Denise, so I went through three more matches, but none of them even came close.
At school on Monday, they didn’t announce the match—nobody else besides me had even placed—and when I looked up Denise online all I saw was a bunch of complaints from other Groveland Day kids about how the league had rigged things so she would lose. I emailed my college to say that I’d won the championship, and they wrote back: That’s impressive! Wrestling here has room for walk-ons, do you want to talk to our coach?
And until that moment, I would’ve said, No, never. I don’t care a thing for sports. But instead I wrote back: Sure.