Chapter 25: The Talk

 

“What do you mean,” Eric asked, “not everyone does?”

“Not everyone hates their own body,” Tony said, staring intently. 

“Okay, you say that, but, like, there’s a whole industry built around making you feel worse about yourself so they can advertise you stuff and promise to make you feel better, so doesn’t that mean that yes, everyone hates their body?”

“Not in that way, Eric,” Serena said, putting a hand on his arm. “Like, yeah, I feel fat when I look at magazines or when I put on pants that used to fit and don’t anymore, and there’s stuff about myself that I’d change if I could, but I wouldn’t want an entirely new one.” 

“I’m comfortable in my own skin,” Anthony said. “I know I’ll grow into it only more comfortably. But I know for a fact that you don’t.”

“How do you know that?” Eric asked.

“You told me.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“The point is,” Tony continued, “that yeah, everyone has bits of themselves they dislike, but ‘I don’t feel at home in my own body’ is not really normal. It’s not healthy. Not if you don’t address it.”

I feel pretty at home in here, Amy said softly, but she was quiet, like she was trying not to speak over Eric’s thoughts. Those raced through his head like suburban moms on a freeway, with little regard for what might be getting in the way. 

“But what does it even mean to feel at home in your own body?” Eric said. “Like, we’re teenagers, right? I mean, technically? Jokes aside, everything about our bodies is supposed to feel alien. It’s the scariest thing that could have happened to us, that can be happening to us, and wanting to step outside of that and just be someone else for a while… doesn’t that make sense?”

“Eric,” Tony said, “growing into myself has been the best thing that could have happened to me. Like, yeah, I put a lot of work into working out and stuff but that’s not because I hate my body, that’s because I’m excited to see what it can do. I love the idea of getting tall and strong. I like the fact that I can lift you with one arm.” Eric hid his blush when Tony said that. “I like the idea of keeping my loved ones safe and, like, yeah, I’m sure there’s some kind of normative bullshit in play there and that women should be able to keep their loved ones safe too but that’s not me. I’m the one who gets to keep y’all safe because I’m a guy and I’m strong and that makes me feel good.”

He paused, and Serena immediately jumped in. “I was really, really scared of going through puberty,” she said. It was clearly not easy for her to say that. “Your body growing… like that. It’s alienating. Like, you guys don’t know how hard it was, to hide the fact that I was growing tits because I didn’t want you to be weird about it, how fucking… how everything messes with you.” She paused for a second and bit her lip. “But I do kind of like the fact that I stopped being a kid and I realized that the parts of me I didn’t like were the kind of things I had control over, like how I looked. If I wanted to be a bit more masculine, that was an option, without it taking away from the fact that I very much want to be a woman.”

“That was eloquent as fuck,” Tony said. “Can I… uh… ask you a question?”

“If it’s about my tits I’m beating you to death with a thermos,” Serena said sweetly. “Otherwise yes, you can.”

“Like, and don’t get this the wrong way, know that we love you either way, and I feel like it’s kind of out in the open already but I kind of want it confirmed and—“

“For the love of— spit it out, Tony.”

“Are you gay?” He asked, wringing his hands. Serena stared at him for a second, then gave the world’s slowest nod. 

“Yes,” she said. She glared suspiciously.

“Okay, cool,” Tony said. “Yeah, okay. Did that… play into the gender thing for you?”

Serena was a little taken aback, but powered through. “Yeah,” she said. “It did. I’ll be honest I thought I wanted to be a boy for a bit growing up because when I saw princess movies I always imagined myself as the knight, you know? Sweeping them off their feet? But at some point I realized that, like, how cool would it be if the knight was a princess too, and I liked that so much better, and once I realized that I figured that, hey, I can be a princess sometimes too. As long as the knight isn’t a guy.”

Eric stared at the two of them. What was happening right now?

What’s happening, Amaranth said, is that your friends are opening up to you in a way that I don’t think they’ve ever opened up to anyone. They’re letting you know that you’re safe. Safe to do what? Why was what Serena was saying making so much sense? Their experiences were so different! Just pay attention. Listen. 

“Okay,” Tony said. “I, uh, also have a thing.” He took a deep breath, and then another one. “I’m bisexual.” Eric blinked. Serena didn’t. 

“I know,” she said.

“What do you mean, you know?” 

“Just your whole…” Serena waved at him up and down. “Your vibe. I feel safe around you, I guess. Like you get it.” She looked at Eric. There was an implication there.

“Well… okay. Cool. Yeah. I don’t know. It played a big deal into me, like, figuring myself out, you know? Because if you like guys you’re supposed to be either a woman or you’re gay. But if you like women you’re supposed to be a guy.” He looked over at Serena. “Or a lesbian. Sorry, is that offensive?”

“Why would that be offensive?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said. “It’s not like they teach us this stuff at school. Whatever. Point is, it took me ages to realize that I could like both. That I could have a boyfriend and that that would be cool as hell, and that that didn’t mean I wasn’t, like, me. That I could still keep that boyfriend safe, that just because I had a boyfriend, that that didn’t mean I couldn’t be one, if that makes sense.”

“Like how me having a girlfriend wouldn’t make me a guy,” Serena said, “and that I wouldn’t want to be a guy with a girlfriend because that’s a whole different, like, energy, and that energy ain’t me.”

“Exactly,” Tony said, and then looked at Eric, who hadn’t said a word. “Does any of what I’ve been saying make sense?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because like,” Eric said, trying to dig inside of him and find feelings that weren’t deeply, deeply personal and embarrassing to admit. “Because, okay, say I’m like that too,” Eric said, quietly, “hypothetically, then I can’t relate to either of you. Like, obviously, Serena, I can’t relate to the whole ‘two princesses’ thing, and—“

“Why obviously?”

“Because I’m a guy. There’s already a boy knight in the picture. And the other one is that, like, maybe I don’t mind there being a boy knight. But then I don’t relate to your whole thing —“ he gestured at Tony, “— because I don’t really… care about being big and strong. Like, don’t get me wrong, I want to protect you both.”

“You proved that by running into a burning building,” Serena said. “You’ve got an overdeveloped hero-gland.” 

“But I don’t have to be a big, strong hero to do it, you know?” He continued. 

Yeah, Amy said. We can be Redshift, instead! We have better hair, too.

“That sounds to me,” Tony said, “like you can relate. Just from the other side.”

“What do you mean?” 

“Well,” Serena said, “I realized that I’m pretty comfortable in my gender because I’m happy being on either side of the princess-knight equation as long as everyone’s a girl. Tony realized he was happy with whoever he was rescuing as long as he’s the knight. I think.” Anthony confirmed with a nod and a little smile. “So maybe you’re happy with whoever the knight is, as long as you don’t have to be the guy in the story?”

“I…” Eric said, and then a mental image of princess dresses and Serena in full armor sweeping him off his feet, flanked by an equally-sweeping, equally-armored Tony. Or a lady knight rescuing Serena and carrying her to safety and having her look at him the way she’d had at Redshift and… “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “I don’t—“

“What if you were a girl?” Tony said. “Like, if you could just magically turn into a girl, would you?”

Eric took a few deep breaths and tried to take the thought experiment at face value. “Okay, uh, I mean, everyone would want to see what it was like, right?”

“Maybe for a minute,” Tony said. “But I’m not expecting any grand revelations, I wouldn’t want to risk getting stuck, and I think just once would be enough for me.”

I mean, you don’t usually ask me to turn back. You forget. Shut up, Eric thought.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t even give it a go, to be honest,” Serena said. “Y’all have facial hair and stuff to consider, and my legs are already jungles.”

“Ew.”

“Deal with it.”

“But no,” Tony said. “Not really. If I could turn into a girl and I had to stay like that? Fuck no. That sounds horrifying. I would feel like an alien in my own skin.”

Don’t we turn into a girl like, at least once a day? Amy wondered. That’s not a normal thing to be comfortable with? Shut up shut up shut up.

“So,” Eric said, with a quiet voice, “I mean… I wouldn’t… like…” His heart was starting to hammer in his chest and it was getting harder to think. His vision was getting blurry. I think you’re having a panic attack, Amy said. Can I slow your heart rate and breathing down? He nodded. Immediately it became easier. To breathe. To see. To think. I’m sorry if I’ve been pushing too hard, Amaranth offered, but Eric shook his head. “I don’t think I’d mind being a girl.” Tony rubbed his jaw for a second.

“So… you remember how I helped with that report, right? On trans people?” Eric nodded. “There’s a thing, like a kind of catchphrase, within the trans community. It’s basically just: ‘you can be a girl if you want to.’ Does that, does that make sense?”

“It doesn’t,” Eric said. “Being a woman is like, it means something, right? Like, you can’t just go ‘I’m a woman’ any more than you can go ‘I’m a dog’. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Sure,” Tony said. “Can you define a woman for me?”

“Well, it’s someone who can have kids—“

“So are people who can’t have kids never women?” Serena asked.

“Um,” Eric said, “I mean, they have a uterus, right? So like, the potential—“

“So, like, if I got a hysterectomy, I wouldn’t be a woman anymore?”

“Okay,” Eric said, “but the chromosomes—“

“Have you had your chromosomes tested?” Tony said. “I haven’t. But no matter what those say, I know I’m Tony.”

“So then what?” Eric asked, exasperated.

“Choice,” Anthony said. “That was the core of the trans part of that thesis, by the way. Only the person who makes a thing can define it. A chair not made for sitting in, like an art piece made of cardboard for example, is still a chair if the artist intended for it to be. And the only person who made you is, you know, you.”

“I mean, if it was that easy—“

“No,” Tony said, shaking his head and cutting that reasoning off before it could even get started, “not everyone would do it. Just a certain group of people who don’t feel happy in their body. In the role that the world assigned them when they were a baby.”

Eric frowned. “But—“

“Do you want to be a girl?”

“Y—“ she said and then the building behind her went up in a ball of flames.