By eli l.a.
I have just returned from the most sexually-prolific Quaker camp you can imagine. There were duct-tape bras, boob contests, and various unmentionable behaviors in crowded rooms. I once kissed nine girls in one night. We streaked and swapped partners. It is 2007 and I am twelve. But we don’t have time to get into that now, because this is a love letter, a thank you to my first-ever boyfriend, who also happened to be my first trans boyfriend. Let’s call him Luca.
Luca and I met in our middle school’s theater program. At the time, I knew Luca was thirteen and hated skirts. I was typecast as the loud best friend, and Luca was in crew. But it was really at this camp where I fell for Luca.
Sure, Luca looked great in his new short haircut. But more importantly, Luca was becoming Luca. He discovered sharpie beards, braggadocios bisexuals, and, yes, a love of duct tape. We did not get romantic until we returned to our hometown in Maine. Luca was entering his freshmen year at the notorious gay high school. I got the same haircut as Luca and started eighth grade.
The good news: Luca’s bus home stopped at my middle school. At the stop, we picked each other up with big bear hugs in late August. I’d jump on board, go to Luca’s, and we’d talk about our dogs and, of course, penises.
The bad news: come September, we could only hug for a short period of time, even though the bus waited about half an hour at that stop. Around five seconds into our embrace, we’d get a loud harrumph from on high.
There was the principal, ironically named McCarthy, standing right next to us, counting us off with his watch, telling us we had to separate. He did this for almost the whole 6-month relationship, and we were Type-A as in Achievers, so we honored adults and their authority. Each time, we let go of each other. If we took a second or two longer, I’d get a heavy hand on my shoulder, like a stone that threatened to drown me.
Then Luca and I stood there awkwardly, not touching, principal still behind me to make sure we didn’t sneak another dirty hug. Next to us, my best friend and her cisboyfriend exchanged saliva. They were sometimes caught in the stairwells, hands down each other’s pants. She’d sit on his lap, and in the next seat over, the vice principal was telling Luca and me to stop holding hands. The days got colder.
That was the price of Type A as in Assimilate. We did what we were told. Luca was Type-A as in Ambition. He started studying for the SATs at twelve, networking his way toward med-school internships, yes, before high school started. He was, of course, about to become the president of the gay high school’s Gay Straight Alliance, which is extra super gay. He wanted to succeed. He didn’t want Attention for being trouble.
But trouble gave us attention. It wasn’t just the middle school principal. Strangers on the street, even our friends, would yell ‘Dyke’ at us.. Luca’s step-dad, a lawyer, held doors for us just so he could say, “Ladies first… or, WHATEVER.”
We had a daily tourniquet of otherness. So we sought out everything that made us feel something or helped even a little. Luca wore three sports bras to school until he graduated to binders. And yes, he slept in them. Luca started taking birth control without the sugar pills, so he would never bleed. One day, Luca called me crying. He’d carved the female symbol into his forearm with his mom’s pumice stone. It took a month to heal. Some days all he did was cry. Some days all I did was cry. And that was pretty reasonable, honestly.
We often ate a whole jar of Nutella in an afternoon. We watched videos about how to look good naked, how to kiss, how to make your breast-shape change with certain exercises. Luca made duct tape wallets, duct tape ties, a functional duct tape tux with pockets. We snuck into our town’s only sex shop — ‘Condom Sense’. We got kicked out because we couldn’t stop laughing at the candy thongs.
That Valentine’s Day, Luca made me a three-dimensional duct tape rocket ship. It was full of presents — a chocolate rose, a pink stuffed bear, a long rhyming love limerick. My parents thought it was Type-A+ as in Absolutely Adorable until we got to the last gift. Out fell red hot handcuffs with stripper pink feathers. Seriously.
My jaw dropped. My parents’ faces fell. They’d already been getting calls from school about how I wasn’t behaving Type-A as in ‘Appropriate.’ Now this. But they said nothing, just immediately wandered out of my room, while I blushed with shame and slammed the door behind me and hid the handcuffs under my bed. We have never spoken of it since.
Please understand: Luca and I were not doing anything that kinky. Yes, we were hooking up. Yes, we talked about sex and bodies all the time. Yes, we were really going through puberty. But the one time Luca offered to show me porn, I literally ran out of the room. I never saw Luca’s chest, let alone a nipple. That was our vibe.
We never used the plastic handcuffs. Luca just thought they were really funny, and he wanted to share the joke with me, because, guess what? Sex and gender is a fucking joke. It is a farce. We all look silly. Why not enjoy it?
Next time we saw each other, I play-slapped Luca’s shoulders — “Why didn’t you tell me! You should have seen their faces!” — and he cackled with glee. Beautiful glee. I wasn’t actually mad. How could I be? How could I pass along that shame I’d felt, when my parents saw Luca’s gift?
I loved Luca, I loved all his gifts, and all his trouble.
But our parents did not get the joke. So we stopped touching in front of them, learned what ‘platonic’ meant, and immediately started promising that it defined us. We wouldn’t give up the dating moniker — we were too obviously infatuated — but the idea that we only friend-touched meant we still got to have some sleepovers. Of course, these were sleepovers neither of us would ever have been allowed to have with a cisboy. We learned the queer art of milking a paradox.
Of course there’s more here, more awful, more daily menace and humiliations we don’t have time for. Remember, this is a love letter. I’ve come to enjoy that gender is not between my legs, but something created on the stage, like the middle school theater where Luca and I met. Gender is a fairytale of costumes and props and dramatic hand gestures. It’s how we sing or if we speak in questions. But the current genders on offer are old stories written long ago by our ancestors, who would not love us, their queer descendants. But queerness is always alive and creative and growing flowers in the cracks, finding new ways to apply fake beards.
In Luca’s case, gender included some surgeries. Last I knew, he was a pediatric residential surgeon, specializing in gender-diverse healthcare. Hence the changed name — I want to celebrate the messy intimacy of genderdiverse youth and their vital relationships, while allowing some well-deserved privacy. I want you to hear all our stumbling and the rocks in our way and let you know that we turned out OK. We are human, we are lucky, and we are a beautiful mess.
It’s important Luca survived adolescence, that I survived, that it does indeed get better. Now, Luca has chest hair, and a career, and a dog. Trans men are lovable. Their joy fuels the queer cause. So often the ones who can’t hide are the brightest beacons.
You don’t have to be Type-A to survive — that’s not what was lovable about Luca. I wish I could give every trans kid with the absolute liquid fire of gender euphoria Luca had in 2007, running down those dirt paths, leg hair in the breeze, surrounded by laughing girls. He was so goddamn beautiful. Every day, for longer every day, he came out with the sun. Thank you.
Contact the author @aliaselila