My phone chirped, a buzz on the counter top right as my eggs finished up. I jumped slightly, and scooped the scrambled breakfast onto a plate before turning around to check the message. Gabe. I set the plate down with a ceramic clunk and let a long breath out of my nose. How shit of a friend could I be, I wondered.

I reached over and swiped my phone open, tapping on the text.

Hey max, amber said you guys had fun at dnd last night. I’m glad!

I drummed my fingers against the faux-granite counter. Scrolling up revealed several more texts he had sent since New Year’s, asking how I was doing for the most part. I had responded “I’m fine” to some of them, but others went unaddressed. This new one though, he hadn’t even tried to ask me anything or say something outright. Just “I’m glad!”. It was almost worse. Like he’d given up on me. God damn it. I screwed my eyes shut and leaned on the counter, putting my head down under my hands. Why couldn’t I just tell him?

I couldn’t even remember when I’d first met Gabe. It was like he had always been there, through the dreamlike haze of elementary school, fighting off monsters with sticks during recess, through the pointless and depressing turbulence of middle school, up through high school, and even now we were both going to the local college together. Gabe, Luis, and I ditching prom to drink under a bridge out of town. Dragging me to a concert that was far too loud back during that phase where Gabe wore eyeliner and the sort of t-shirts that got him sent to the principle’s office. Him cackling when I nearly hacked up a lung trying my first (and only) joint. Rolling his eyes when Amber and I would spend hours ranting to him about our tabletop adventures. How many people could brag about having a best friend that stretched back before living memory? How stupidly lucky was I? I knew I didn’t deserve a friend like him, I’d known that for years.

And now here I was. Transgender.

Even after five days the word still felt unearned in my mouth. Was I really… that? I thought back to last night, playing Gwendolyn, hearing them all call me “she.” Just the memory gave me goosebumps and filled my brain with colors I didn’t know existed. I tried to think about being called that all the time. Wait, I could call myself that! I could say that I’m… she.

I felt my cheeks burn slightly. This was so weird.

Shaking my head, I picked up the plate of eggs and walked over to the cutting board I had set aside. Eggs, meat, cheese, tomatoes, into the tortilla and rolled up. I must have made this breakfast a thousand times, and was quite proud of my skill in the kitchen. Still, I sat down and thought about the idea of eating this breakfast burrito as a girl for the first time.

A girl. Me. Me a girl. Wow.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel a twitch in my gut. Why should I do this to myself? It was ruining my friendship with Gabe, I knew my family would be shit about it, and half the country already hated me for being Mexican American. It was so much to deal with. Besides, I’d read about trans people with crippling dysphoria, the ones where transition was not an option. I didn’t have that, who was I to compare myself to people who were actually suffering? I’d made it this far as a guy. I would be fine. I should just be fine.

Unbidden, I thought back to middle school, when puberty started. It was scary for everyone, right? But I couldn’t deny that the way I hated the various changes was not the usual. Other boys started so much masculine posturing, showing off their muscles and bragging about their… length. Meanwhile I just retreated into thicker and thicker hoodies. A near-universal experience for trans people, if the Internet was to be believed.

Ugh, why did I need to keep convincing myself? The way I felt last night, the feeling of thinking of myself as a girl, of imagining myself with long hair, dresses, other… modifications, it was obvious. So why did I still feel like I needed more proof?

I still had a lot to figure out, I realized. The process before me was going to be so long and hard, and I needed to pull myself together if I was going to make it to the other side.

And if I still didn’t know who I am, how could I even begin to try roping my friends into all of this? They didn’t deserve that. Better to figure more out on my own time, so that they didn’t end up burdened with things they didn’t sign up for. Yeah, ok, I had a plan then.

And with that I realized I could text Gabe back.

Thanks! Yeah I did, hey sorry I’ve been so quiet recently, just felt a little off for a while there. Probably something in the water lol. Wanna grab lunch today or tomorrow or something?

It took him about a minute to respond, during which I had managed to imagine up no less than seventeen ways that that text could have destroyed our friendship.

Of course!! I’m actually already downtown w/ luis, you ok if its the three of us?

Cool. Crisis averted.

 

---

Calling it “Downtown” was a stretch for the string of shops and restaurants that snaked along the turnoff of the highway at the entrance to town, but it had a McDonald's, a discount clothing store, and a local barbecue place that everyone could boast getting food poisoning from, and hell that’s all a downtown needed in my experience. Though I’d lived here my whole life so maybe I was biased. I parked along the sleepy canal road and walked a few blocks up the street, letting the crisp January air carry my feet along the sidewalk. Whenever I talked with friends online about living in Nevada, they were always so surprised when I complained about how cold it got in winter. “But it’s a desert!” they would cry, as though I had challenged the very foundations of their worldview. We’re literally in the mountains! Just because we’re as dry as my grandma’s humor around here doesn’t mean that the temperature can’t drop just like anywhere else.

And so I had my trusty fleece jacket and army green beanie pulled on. They felt different now, for some reason. They weren’t uncomfortable, really, but I was suddenly acutely aware of how casually masculine they were. It was hard imagining anything different though, since this is how I’d dressed my entire life. Still, as I turned onto the main street I saw a woman wearing a cute grey and yellow coat with a scarf tucked into the collar, and I couldn’t help but glance down at my own. Maybe it was the way hers was pulled in at the waist while mine just sort of hung anticlimactically from my shoulders? I felt myself staring and awkwardly turned away, hoping she hadn’t noticed, my cheeks burning slightly from embarrassment. I had never really even thought, until that moment, of a jacket as something gendered. God, I would need entirely new clothes, huh? I didn’t hate my current ones, necessarily, but there wasn’t much to admire about a sparse collection of straight cut jeans and souvenir t-shirts. Was a shirt advertising my 2016 trip to Portland gendered?

“Max! Hey, Max!” I jumped slightly, snapped out of my thoughts. Spinning around, I saw Gabe walking up the street, waving excitedly. His normally frazzled blond cowlick was actually managed backwards, I noticed, and he had recently shaved clean. Luis, who stood nearly half a head taller than either Gabe or I, followed behind, his curly black hair in its usual puffed-up shape. I also saw that he was wearing a pair of skinny jeans, which I felt was a bold choice for January.

I couldn’t help but notice a smile crack my lips as Gabe wrapped me up in a bear hug. “You walked right past us dude!”

“Ah, my bad,” I laughed. God it was good to see them, even if it had only been five days.

Luis opted for a friendly wave. “Good to see you, man,” he said.

Gabe pulled back, hands resting on my shoulders. “We…” he glanced at Luis for a second. The other boy shrugged. Gabe turned back to me. “You’ve been good?”

Oh Christ, his voice was so soft when he said it. I glanced between his eyes and Luis, both of which were focused on me. Damn it, I just wanted things to be normal! I could tell that they were going to be walking on eggshells around me all day, which just made me feel like shit for disrupting our friendship dynamic. Just nip it in the bud now, it’s been dragging on too long anyways.

I chewed on my lip. “Yeah. Listen, you guys are my oldest friends, right? You know I’ve had moments of anxiety in the past. That’s all. But hey!” I spread my arms wide and gave them a genuine smile. “I’m here and happy to see you.” It wasn’t a lie.

Still, I saw them momentarily glace at each other before Gabe said, “Well, awesome, glad you’re feeling better.”

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Wanna get lunch?” I asked in the most obvious attempt to change the conversation in the history of trans-kind.

And so we did. Gabe initially started drifting towards the aforementioned McDonald’s, but I refused to let him disrespect his body like that and instead dragged the two of them to a deli a block from the main street that I had discovered a few months ago.

There is something to be said about the magic of just walking down the street with your friends on a Saturday. As old friends do, we drifted in and out of conversations and silence as we went, having long ago tuned into each other’s social rhythms. As we turned into the deli and started scanning the menu, Luis regaled us with his exploits in the RPG he’d gotten for Christmas.

I plopped down on a bar stool. “You get obsessed with those things. Didn’t you finish The Witcher in like a week?”

“It was two weeks! And besides, I still haven’t one-hundred-percented it yet.”

“Ah,” Gabe said. “Hear that Max? It was two weeks.” He gave me a knowing smirk.

Luis bumped his shoulder. “You have no right to tease me when he-” and, horrifically, Luis pointed at me, “-wastes every Friday night playing make-believe with Amber and Co.”

Christ on Earth that hurt. I realized suddenly that that was the first time I’d heard someone misgender me. Is it misgendering if he didn’t know any better? I certainly didn’t fault him for it, but Oh My God getting called “he”, after all the emotional energy I’d spent in the past few days figuring out why that was wrong, stung. It stung bad. I had to let myself turn off and back on again to get the bad juju to flush out of my system.

“-literally wouldn’t text me back for days that one time,” Gabe was saying. I hoped they didn’t notice me zonk out there for about half a minute, but it seemed they were too busy bantering about Luis’ digital habits. I took the moment to turn away and start ordering a wrap at the counter.

Unfortunately that was far from the end of it. As we sat and leisurely gnawed our way through lunch in the corner of the deli like the noisy hooligan youngsters I’m sure we appeared to be, I had to listen to them call me “he” several more times. It wasn’t as violent as it was the first time, but I quickly got less talkative, and tried (in vain) to twist the flow of conversation in directions that would make the third person less likely. And the worst part was that it was an outstanding day otherwise. We finished the food and strolled our usual haunts throughout town, weaving up past the fire station and park and around to the tiny strip mall that swapped out businesses on a seemingly weekly basis. Luis balanced himself on the sidewalk shoulder as we passed the movie theater and Gabe read out all the new releases as if we were actually going to watch any of them. We had done it a million times. It was tradition. It was perfect. We had a system. And, as though to spit in the face of it all, I was a fucking girl.

Gabe turned to me while we were sitting on some rocks by the edge of the suburbs. “I gotta go soon, but I wanted to ask you Max, what’s up with your birthday?”

Oh wow I had completely forgotten about my birthday. January ninth. Only four days from now. To be fair I had a good excuse to be distracted.

“Huh,” I said. “Yeah I haven’t really put too much thought into it.”

Luis tilted his head. “Really? It’s your twenty-first!”

“Yeah yeah I know, I get to black out in the comfort of my own home, big deal,” I said with a wave of the hand. Oh shit, was that gesture too feminine? Did they notice? Probably not, but best to play it safe and tuck your hands under your legs going forward. There we go.

“Yeah I guess if that’s what you want to do.” Gabe leaned back against the rock I was sitting on. “Your family doesn’t seem like the most fun people to black out with though, to be honest.”

He had a point. My mom (the white half, ironically) was Catholic as all hell, my dad was seemingly carved out of granite, and the older brother that still lived in the house with us was one heated gamer moment away from unknowingly hate criming yours truly. There was a reason I spent a lot of my time meandering through town.

“Eh,” I said, having discussed this with them several weeks back. “They’ll leave us alone if we ask, Dad said something about ‘being my own man’.” Those words dripped out of my mouth with more venom than I intended, and I couldn’t help but notice Luis notice and shoot me a questioning look for a moment. “Besides, you know I’ve never been comfortable in bars.”

“So you have your house to yourself for a night, just have some friends over?”

I absentmindedly tapped my finger on the cold rock under my hand. “Yeah. Nice and chill. Probably just be you guys and some of the DnD folks. You know Amber and Bo, and there’s this cool guy Micah, kinda want to get to know him better so I’ll invite him too.”

Gabe perked up. “Oh Micah Hui? We know him.” So that was his last name.

“Oh really?” I tilted my head. “How?”

“Dude, we’re friends with Amber too. She introduced us. We uh…” Gabe looked away slightly.

Luis leaned in between us. “We get weed from him.”

“Ah got it,” I said. There was a slightly awkward pause before Gabe decided to get the conversation back on its previous track, by force if necessary.

“Having a night chilling with you guys would be great,” he said. “That’s a Wednesday, right? I have work during the day, but we could meet up after and head down to the liquor store for your first purchase!”

“My first legal purchase, you mean.”

“Oh well yeah, but that’s what makes it special. You’ll be free in the eyes of the law now, no more violating minor civil codes.”

“Damn, got any other civil codes I can violate then?” Gabe laughed. “I’m serious, I have a reputation to maintain!”

Luis looked thoughtful for a moment. “Fornication?”

Once we were done laughing, I had to say goodbye as Gabe had evening plans. The two of them took off to where Luis had parked and I meandered back through town to my car, sitting on the dirt shoulder of the canal road. The sun was close to the horizon, casting its watery January light across the hills of rock and sand that stretched out past the town, never too far away. I leaned against my hood for a second, watching the bushes stir slightly in the faint wind. Would this just be my life now, I wondered.

“No. There’s still so much I have to do,” I said out loud. The bushes listened. “It will go back to normal in the end though, once I figure it out.”

I got into my car and drove home.