“She wanted this. She asked for this!”

“She?!? My son is not a she, Cheryl! This is delusion! This is abuse!”

“You need to get off my property, Dale, or I’m calling the cops!”

“I bought this house, you bitch!”

“Before you abandoned it!”

I couldn’t believe this was happening. I hadn’t seen my father in years… I couldn’t believe how much I’d missed having him around, and he actually wanted to see me now?

I needed to talk to him, no matter what my mom said. I got out of the car, my wig blowing back into my face from the wind. Fed up with it, I took it off and threw it back through the passenger side door before slamming it.

“Honey, I told you to wait in the car!” my mother said, sweetly, yet clearly uncomfortable.

“That’s my boy! Facing problems head-on instead of hiding from them!”

I hugged him tightly and he patted me on the back.

“Why’d you take off your wig, honey?” my mother asked, concerned.

“I hate that wig, Mom! It’s tight and scratchy and itchy and it won’t stay out of my face!”

My father looked up from me and towards my mother. “You made him wear a wig?”

“She wanted to try living as a girl!”

“No son of mine…” he angrily left the sentence behind. “What else did she do to you, Chris?”

For the first time in my life, my father actually seemed interested in what I had to say. “She keeps telling me what clothes to wear… and - and she won’t let me play video games anymore!”

“Are you seriously trying to turn my son into a sissy? My son?!? Are you that messed up in the head, Cheryl? I thought you were supposed to be a shrink!”

“No, she just… I…” She looked me in the eyes and started crying. “Kris, I - I’m so sorry! You can have your Mario back! You don’t have to wear the wig anymore, you don’t have to wear anything you don’t want to! I’m so sorry!” She fell to her knees, sobbing.

“‘Sorry’ isn’t good enough, Cheryl! You’ve traumatized the poor kid! I’m taking him with me.” He turned me away from my mother, who was still bawling, and kneeled down in front of me. “If you can tell the nice people at the courthouse what you told me, they’ll let you come live with me, okay, son?”

I nodded, and he led me to his car, parked just a few houses down the street. I could still hear my mother pleading with me as we drove away.

~

The two of us ended up at a diner somewhere along the interstate, just a little ways south from home. Well, it used to be home.

I ordered pancakes, but all they had was boring, regular syrup. I was a bit embarrassed wearing this pink shirt now, since this was the first time I’d shared a meal with my father since… actually, it felt like the first time ever. He picked up on my discomfort.

“Don’t you worry, buddy. We’ll get you something else to wear soon.”

I looked out the window next to our booth. There was something melancholy about this unfamiliar landscape. Refuse fluttered about the pavement, and a homeless man laying on a bus stop bench was backlit by the deep red sunset. I just kept watching the cars - zooming by when the stop light was green, idling with visible exhaust when it was red. This stop light, though I had never seen it before, was my one anchor to familiarity that I still had left.

“Why’d you come back?” I asked him.

He swallowed a gulp of cola. “I wanted to see my little boy turn into a man! Or, I guess, my little girl turning into a man.” He cackled, performatively. I looked down at my plate in shame; the half-eaten mediocre pancakes, too, seemed to judge me. “You’re thirteen now, Chris, how does it feel?”

I poked at a tear in the faux-leather seat. “It feels weird.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense, considering what your mother has done to you.” He leaned in. “But it’s over now, buddy. You don’t have to pretend to be a girl anymore!”

“Pretend…” I whispered under my breath.

“In fact… let’s never talk about this girl business ever again - how ‘bout that, bud?”

I already didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Not with him, anyway. “What was Bermuda like?”

“Bermuda? Oh, is that where your mother told you I was?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, yeah, uh… Bermuda…” He seemed unsure what to say and elected to change the subject while clearing his throat. “Hey, how’s your brother doing?”

“I dunno.” I said. “I haven’t seen Jeff since Christmas.”

“Ah.” He sighed. “And I suppose he’s been talking to your mother?”

“Maybe.”

“Well he hasn’t talked to me in months. Your mother turned him against me, like she does with everyone. I’m so glad she didn’t get to you.” He ruffled my hair, roughly, twisting the follicles around each other to the point of pain. “Eugh, dandruff.” Hey shook his hand around haphazardly, shedding my own dead skin onto my pancakes. “You need a haircut, kiddo. Sunlight helps with dandruff.”

~

This was a mistake.

That’s all I could think to myself while my father shaved my head nearly down to the bone the next day. Judging by the hair already on the floor in his kitchen, he made a habit of this sort of low-cost barbering.

Nothing here felt right. The paint on the walls was bubbling up and peeling off to reveal a slightly different beige. The refrigerator was full of strange pickled items like beets and eggs, all out of date. The toilet flushed weird. I had to sleep on the couch and woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a semi. Was there any way out of this?

No. I was stuck here now whether I liked it or not. I was unfamiliar with the area, so it wasn’t like I could run away. And I couldn’t disappoint my father, not now; like he said, we just finally got each other back after five years. If I changed my mind, if I wanted to go back, I might never see him again. Kylie and Britt would have to be disappointed - I wouldn’t make it to the dance that night.

The reality of the situation really set in when mom brought some of my things. I heard the doorbell and ran for the door, but I didn’t even get to see her. All that remained on the doorstep was a cardboard box, piled high with khakis, boyish T-shirts, my old stretched-out pajamas, some DVDs, and…

My game console. I almost wanted to break it over the top of my near-bald head. I wanted to jump off the railing and cry on the ground until she came back for me. But she never would. She knew what she thought I wanted.

That night, instead of enjoying a formative experience of my teenage life, my father and I stayed in and watched the latest Dreamworks movie on DVD.

~

“This was a mistake” was all I could think to myself when I started at a new school near my father’s apartment. I didn’t know anyone there and I never did. I disappeared into my schoolwork with one half of myself, and did whatever my father asked of me with my other half. I was dead inside. This wasn’t a life. My voice continued to drop. I tried to make the most of it, doing funny sports announcer voices to try to get other kids to like me, but I think they just found it annoying. I was a punching bag.

“This was a mistake” was all that ran through my mind as the hair grew on my face, and I just couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror anymore. So I didn’t shave it. I didn’t shave my chest, either, and it grew a mossy brown covering like an inescapable undershirt. I’d close myself up in the hallway closet at home and just play video games in the dark. It was the only time I felt okay, because I could pretend I wasn’t in this body. But sometimes I’d get jealous of Mario’s somehow naturally hairless physique, then turn it off and silently cry, hoping our roommate wouldn’t hear me.

“This was a mistake” was the only phrase left in my head when for the following Christmas, my mother sent me a package with a video game and a collared button-up shirt. Nothing seemed to get me excited anymore, but I just kept mirroring my father’s emotions to get by. I wasn’t sure I still liked being around him - he was always drinking and complaining about my mother. I’d just smile and nod, smile and nod, but the head I was nodding no longer contained a person.

Eventually there was just nothing left. I’d buried myself six feet under gray matter and let the automaton of my mortal flesh do the rest. It was the same thing, over and over: go to school, leave school, do homework, try to sleep, do it again. When I turned sixteen and got my driver’s license, my father told me to get a job so I could pay for gas. I ended up working at Pretzels, Etc.

It was easy enough. Pull the pretzels out of the freezer and throw them in the oven, then cover them in too much salt. If someone wants a lemonade, put the cup under the spout and press the button.

“Don’t forget the ice,” my coworker, Charley, would always say. And I’d just roll my eyes, pour it out, and start over. Who cares if I waste some lemons and corn syrup? I’d already wasted my life.

At the end of every day, on the way out, I’d walk past Celia’s Styles. I tried my hardest not to look anymore, but sometimes I’d sneak a peak and feel disgusting. Disgusting like the trans women in every comedy movie my father watched. Disgusting like he saw the crossdressers and drag queens and other assorted “faggots” on network TV. The only thing we had in common was what we watched on the flatscreen at home together. The only thing we had in common is both of us hated who I really was.

Sometimes, on my break, I’d try to hit on girls at the mall. But it never worked. I was just doing what I thought I was supposed to do - you know, be an asshole. But the truth is, even if the girls responded to that, it always fizzled out. “What do you like to do?” they’d ask. And I couldn’t answer them, because I didn’t like to do anything. It’s no surprise. How could anyone love me if I didn’t love myself?

Our apartment balcony was about twenty feet up. The fall probably wouldn’t be enough. The airsoft guns strewn about the house couldn’t do the job either. I grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors and held them up to the source of my pain, those godforsaken testosterone factories, as if threatening them. But they weren’t intimidated. They knew I wouldn’t do it, because I was a coward. I was always a coward.

I never hurt myself. Not physically. I just kept torturing myself by going online and reading fanciful stories where little boys got caught with mommy’s makeup and they were forced into being girls. Usually forced, anyway. Sometimes they had a choice. And they always seemed to make the same one; the one I didn’t. The one I squandered.

One day at work, I was at the register when I noticed someone across the way was looking at me. Those green eyes. That dirty blonde hair. No… it couldn’t be…

Britt?

She just stared at me. Our eyes met, and she didn’t look away. She just looked sad. Disappointed. I felt the same way, but what could I do?

I looked to her right, and on the same bench… that brunette must have been Kylie. But she wouldn’t even look at me. She hid her face like she was crying and pulled on Britt’s arm, probably saying something like, “Come on, let’s go. I can’t handle this.” Britt just kept looking at me, though, maybe hopeful that something could bring me back from the abyss behind that scraggly beard. She had more hope than I had. Hope was foolish. They were both beautiful and I’d become beastly.

I closed up for the night and made my way past Celia’s as usual. But there was a crowd.

“What happened?” I asked the first person who looked like they might know.

“It’s Celia,” he said. “She had a nasty fall earlier and no one was around. I’m not sure she’s gonna make it.”

I just… I wanted to cry, so bad, but I couldn’t. My eyes watered but nothing happened. I turned towards the display window and stood there in my stuffy uniform with the top button undone and chest hair poking out. I could feel every follicle on my face as I used my glassy eyes to look at the pink dress for the very last time.

~

Nothing was easy for me, but my grades in school were okay enough to get into a university. It’s a good thing, too, because getting far, far away from my father finally snapped me out of the denial. I couldn’t take it anymore. Mere months after moving into the dorm, it all came flooding back. I got in touch with the LGBT center and learned more about transness - I was definitely some flavor of it. What kind? I don’t know - woman, nonbinary, whatever. It didn’t matter. I sometimes think back to that first time I met Celia. 'A perfect medium'... maybe she was trying to tell me something from the start. The mall always changes, but some things never do. You know what set up shop in her old store? Pretzels 'n' Things.

I got my hormones and that made all the difference. I felt alive again. I started shaving every day, everywhere I wanted to, and I wore clothes that spoke to me. My father wasn’t a fan of this. Every time he talked to me, it was about how disappointed he was. How my mother had apparently “gotten to me.” I had started talking to her again, sure, but it wasn’t like that. Honestly, it wasn’t the same as it used to be at all - for the good and the bad. We weren’t as close as we once were. No more brunch together, calls were weekly at most. She refrained from suggesting anything gender related to me, worrying that she might have undue influence. I don’t think she did anymore. I appreciated the thought, but it hurt to see her carrying around this guilt all the time.

It felt like someone else was always making my choices for me. I never knew all my options - it was boy or girl, videogames or skirts, my father or my mother. No one ever told me I didn't have to give up a part of myself to get another. Being a boy turned out to be a prison. I wonder what could have been, what I could have done differently. Could I have changed anything?

Maybe I wouldn’t change anything. At my university, I met the love of my life, another transfemme named Kristina, or Tina for short. Everyone called us “the two Kris’s”. Voice training could get me back towards the girlish, chipper sort of voice I missed, without taking away my ability to do that cool announcer voice if I wanted to. I even had a lead on something that could help get rid of all this unwanted hair, permanently - though at a cost. The past was over - things were going to be okay.

~ Fin

How unfortunate. Reconciling with their father brought Kris no peace at all, did it? That puberty sounded horrifying. Luckily, it looks like things are going to work out in the end, but… would you like to try something else?

The Option You Weren’t Told About

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