The Transition

A couple weeks before my top surgery, I curled up with Michael Dillon’s memoir in the corner of the school library. He was the first transgender man to undergo top surgery, all the way back in 1942, but he wrote very little about the procedure and what to expect of it. What he did write was this: The anesthesia made him vomit for nearly a full day afterward, and he was so happy to finally be “rid of what I hated most.”

I don’t know all the ways that top surgery has progressed since 1942, although I have to think that the anesthesia has gotten better.

For me, the worst part has been the drains. Drains are these round, softball-­sized bulbs hung by pins from the compression binder and connected to these tubes that disappear into my chest beneath the incision marks on my pecs. They have to be emptied twice a day. I’ve been doing it myself for the last two and a half weeks, measuring as the blood has gone from a vibrant, syrupy red to a thick, sluggish black. It’s done a lot to solidify my belief that the human body is truly disgusting. Today, at last, I’m getting them taken out.

“Now, this will feel weird, but it shouldn’t hurt.” The nurse—­whose name I’ve already forgotten—­pulls a glove over each hand. “Are you ready, Hunter?”

I come back to the moment and nod. This doctor’s office is like every other, small and sparse and blindingly white. I sit at the edge of the exam table, bare-­chested and avoiding eye contact with my dad, who’s sitting a few feet away in a plastic chair.

Being shirtless in front of him is strange because my chest doesn’t look male. Not when you compare it to, like, a cis guy’s chest. The nipple grafts are scabbed over and most of the skin is still numb to the touch. It looks weird and feels even weirder.

The nurse puts one hand on the side of my chest while the other wraps around the first tube. I wince at the strange sensation and watch as she slowly pulls it out. She’s right; it doesn’t hurt but it feels weird. Like a magician yanking scarves out of his trunk.

Except I don’t think scarves are supposed to squeal. I can tell the nurse hears it, too, because she makes a face as she finishes pulling it out: woOP! Like a slide whistle.

Fresh blood dribbles from the new, dime-­sized opening in my chest. The nurse calmly tapes a cotton ball down on it. Then she drags her finger along my rib cage, and I realize there’s something else there.

“That’s coagulated blood,” she explains, holding her gloved finger up into the air. “Totally normal, looks like you just had some left in the tube.”

My blood fits perfectly on the pad of her finger. A small black worm. Even my dad’s nose wrinkles when the nurse holds it up in his direction.

After the second drain is removed, silently, the nurse explains a few things that I already know: Don’t pick at the scabs, don’t lift my arms above my head for a while, and any questions should be phoned to the office, not typed into Google. I almost roll my eyes, but I notice Dad nodding along, so I let the nurse prattle on.

On paper, my dad and I look something alike: blue-­gray eyes, reddish-­brown hair, and a slightly upturned nose. But my dad seems like he should be military: buzz cut, flat mouth. I’m still waiting to outgrow the puffy face I got from starting testosterone.

Traffic isn’t bad for a Friday afternoon in Chicago, and it gets better as Dad drives us away from the surgeon’s office and toward Naperville. He’s a first officer for Southwest, and travels in total silence. It’s just us and the Duran Duran song playing on the radio, which all feels very normal considering we watched two tubes be pulled out of my body a few minutes ago.

Eventually, though, Dad clears his throat and turns the volume down a few clicks. “You’re back to school on Monday, right?”

“Yep.”

“You feel . . . all right?”

That’s as close as he’s gotten to asking about my chest since the surgery. “I’m fine.”

He nods curtly. “Good. Well, sorry I won’t be here to see you off.”

“It’s just coming back from winter break.”

“Your last winter break,” he corrects me. “High school only happens once.”

Thank God, I think.

He continues, “Anyway, my schedule is going to be rough for a while. Trying to make up for being grounded the last two weeks.”

He leaves because you had to go and get an expensive fucking surgery unsaid, but I can still hear it hanging in the air between us. Irritation prickles across my skin.

I came out as trans when I was thirteen. Testosterone wasn’t an option at that point, but there were puberty blockers. Mom was willing to sign off on it. Dad had “safety concerns.” So our relationship really sucked for the three years that my body bled and my breasts grew, and sometimes one of us will go back to scratch at that scab.

I could do that now, but I’m not in the mood to spend the rest of the drive home rehashing this. The prickle fades into a buzz. I sigh and stare out the window.

There’s nothing like Chicago in the thick of winter. The dead trees look like scratch marks at the bottom of the cloudless, blindingly blue sky. I love this time of year, although a large reason for that is the excuse it provides me to layer up and hide my body. We’re all androgynous blobs when it’s 20° F. It dawns on me suddenly that since I have the chest of a man, I might not hate summer anymore.

It’s a strange thought. I can’t visualize myself in a tank top.

“Oh, make sure you keep an eye on Norman.” Dad’s voice drowns out the radio again. “Annie’s been talking my ear off about predator—­migration. Something.”

“You’re listening to Annie, now?” I joke, pulling out my phone.

Most of my messages are from last month, people wishing me a speedy recovery right before I went into the hospital. My mom and younger stepsister, Maddy, are among them. Nobody’s really checked in since then, which is fine. It’s not like I want to tell Maddy all about my scabbing nipples. I just text Gabe, my best friend and one of only two people I’ve kept in the loop for every horrible step of this.

drains OUT

see you Monday :)

“He’s your dog,” Dad answers.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Hunter.” I look up and he’s staring at me. “Seriously, I know we joke, but she’s not crazy.”

Yeah, she is, I think, that’s why she’s Animal Annie.

Annie Searchwell lives in the house opposite ours. Every time Channel 17 needs someone to talk about local wildlife or adoption drives or whatever else, they call Animal Annie. I’d be surprised if they didn’t send her an honorary paycheck every now and again.

“We’re not in the inner city,” he continues. “That preserve is right there and—­”

“It’s the Evil Dead forest, I know.” I relent. “Yeah, I’ll keep an eye on him. I always do.”

My dad nods. “Thank you.”

My phone buzzes in my hands. It’s Gabe.

LET’S GO!

Animated confetti explodes across the screen. I stifle a laugh.

***

Marcy Calico is sitting on the hood of her maroon Sonata when my dad finally pulls onto our street. She’s impossible to miss.

Mars is the name she actually goes by, which I think prepares you for the rest of her. She’s a half-­Filipino girl who’s six months older than me. Her arms are covered in tiny stick-­and-­poke tattoos and her hair is turquoise from a failed attempt to dye it Christmas green. My dad parks in the driveway and as I step out, Mars clambers down from her car and runs toward me, boots crunching on the snow slush.

I brace myself for impact. Instead, Mars stops a few inches in front of me, arms held threateningly open. “Hi. Hug?”

I consider her for a second. “Gentle, please.”

She doesn’t give me the usual bear hug, but she still comes pretty close to crushing me. I deal with it. It’s been two weeks since I last saw her, and hearing her giggle in my ear breathes a whole new life into me.

“Hiya, Frank.” She lifts one hand and waves at my dad. “Mind if I steal him?”

I can’t tell if my dad likes Mars or not. I think he’s mostly thankful that she gets me out of the house sometimes. “All yours.” He nods. “Just bring the dog with you. He needs a walk.”

Norman hates walks and only willingly goes outside to pee. I still nod and let my dad open the door. My fat nine-­year-­old Chihuahua runs out and does one circle around my legs before he tries running for the house again.

Mars scoops him up before he can. “Thanks, Frank!”

We walk down to her car, where I slide into the passenger seat and Mars puts Norman in the back to sleep for as long as we’re out.

When Mars gets behind the wheel, there’s suddenly a Tupper­ware container in her hands. She grins and holds it out to me. “Congrats.”

I try to give her a disapproving look, even though I’m smiling as I take the tub. “You didn’t need to get me anything.”

“Uh, yeah, I did.” Mars makes a face. “Your hang-­ups about gifts are not shared. I missed you. You get a gift. Suck it up.”

Then she sits there, expectantly, so I pop the lid off. Two cupcakes stare back at me. The frosting is a strange shade of yellowish brown. A single raspberry sits atop each one.

It takes a second to process the joke: They’re boobs.

“You like ’em? Figured you should get a last bit of enjoyment out of, y’know, having tits.” Mars giggles as she grabs one and takes a giant bite out of the frosting. “The raspberry is the nipple!”

I laugh, though it’s more out of shock than anything else. I take a small bite for myself. The frosting is some kind of maple.

When I don’t say anything, Mars’s eyebrows knit together. “Are they good? Or do I need to kick my own ass?”

I smile. “No, they’re good. Really good, actually.”

As quickly as it went, her grin returns. “Awesome. Hazel helped me make ’em. The maple was her idea.”

Hazel and Mars have been . . . well, dating isn’t the right word for it. Seeing each other? Screwing around? I don’t know. Hazel is two years older than us and works at this flower shop two blocks down from the theater where Mars and I work. Mars owns one of their shirts, a cartoon Venus flytrap with “Grounded Gardening” in big bold letters across the chest. A part of me wants to shrivel up and die thinking about her and my chest, but I take another bite of cupcake and swallow the thought.