a close friend and classmate of my brother Jake, and their only daughter Laura, a year behind me—went to our school. I didn’t know any of them well, but what I did know was that they were always kind, circling the periphery of my community and family. I’d never had reason to give them much thought until one Sunday at church.
The midcentury modern architecture of St. James Church appealed to me. I imagined the smooth, white vaulted ceilings, skylights, and few ornate furnishings to be the result of the mysterious Second Vatican Council I’d heard my parents discussing at various times—an apparently tectonic shift in papal ideology that I didn’t grasp, nor care to have anyone explain to me. I did know that it had loosened some of the rules we were supposed to live by—we seemed to have fish less frequently for Friday dinner, for one. The Church remained a puzzle to me and older, dank, traditional cathedrals only reinforced the feeling of darkness and mystery surrounding the religion I was born into.
I thought religion was supposed to be a comfort in people’s lives, but ours didn’t feel like that to me. Shadows and dark corners lurked everywhere, literally and figuratively, a powerful energy I sensed whenever I entered those “holy” confines. The musty smell and the slight chill in the air gave the impression that these interior spaces were not for exploration by outsiders. Even as a very young child, I knew I was an outsider.
The Desmonds sat in their usual pew one section to the left of where my family regularly sat. While some parishioners never strayed from their preferred places, we drifted around a general area about a third of the way back from the front, with no strong preference for either side—squatters among the permanent pew residents.
I felt a small pang of annoyance as I watched the altar boys, some of them friends of mine, lighting candles. I found church excruciatingly boring. I hated figuring out what to wear and thought perhaps wearing the cassock of the altar boys would get rid of that hassle, as well as saving me from boredom during Mass. Our church didn’t allow altar girls, which I thought was stupid, because other Catholic churches in Calgary did. But what I really wanted was to be an altar boy.
“Did you see Laura’s new haircut?” Mom whispered to me during the opening hymn. I located the Desmonds and saw Laura sporting a short, stylish cut—the sassy wedge many young girls and women had recently begun to wear, popularized by figure skater Dorothy Hamill. My stomach tightened. Sitting there with my shoulder-length, quasi-shag mop, reminiscent of mid-1970s David Cassidy, I knew exactly where this would go. For the rest of the service, I stole glances at Laura, my newly-appointed nemesis. It took exactly four seconds into our drive home for my mother to mention it.
“That is a really smart haircut Laura has there,” she said. Faint, distracted murmurs of affirmation came from the others.
“Mm-hmm.”
“You see a lot of girls with that sexy, short pixie these days,” she went on. I cringed. My mom had used the words sexy and pixie—horrifying in and of themselves. Pixie reminded me of some fairy or sprite and sexy sounded plain yucky referring to a girl my age. I waited for what I knew had to be coming. She turned in her front passenger’s seat to look at me in the back.
“You should get your hair cut like that,” she said with authority. “It would draw attention away from your chin.”
“I like mine how it is,” I replied. And what’s wrong with my chin? I refused to give her an opportunity to tell me. The truth was, I didn’t love my hairstyle; I wished it were shorter, but people already frequently called me him and he. This frustrated and upset me, not because they were wrong, but because I knew they were right. If I cut my hair short, I’d look so much like a boy that the shame I felt over the universe’s big screwup would kill me. Renée wouldn’t cut her hair that short.
Shame and embarrassment burned on my face enough as it was. I don’t want to be seen as a girl who looks like a boy, I want to be seen as the boy I am. When others acknowledged that boy in me, a split second of euphoria gave way to a crushing weight of disappointment and injustice. It seemed easier to avoid being put in that position and try my best to look like a girl, since my parts seemed to dictate that that’s what I was.
“It’s smart and sporty; you’d find it much easier to take care of,” Mom pressed.
“Yeah, no thanks.” She turned back to face the road.
“I think a pixie cut would really suit you,” she continued. I stared out the window, a giraffe in a world of barnyard animals.
Over the next year, I saw Laura Desmond and her haircut everywhere. Her hairdo bore the hallmark of my failings, looming large as the symbol of my gender dysphoria. If I saw her in the school hallway, I’d duck into the washroom or linger in the gym to avoid her. Her hair became the token of all that I feared because I knew that cutting my hair the same way would reveal my hidden shame to the world. It seemed so pointless. There’s nothing I can do to fix this.
“Do you want to go to Mass tonight with me or tomorrow morning with Dad?” Mom asked a few weeks later. Saturday evening Mass was a welcome recent development, giving me a fifty-fifty chance of avoiding Laura Desmond each week. I began my mental calculations. Were the Desmonds likely to be there? How often have I seen Laura at Saturday Mass? Is it better to go with Dad because he never mentions Laura’s hair?
“I think I’ll go tomorrow,” I replied.
“I thought you liked going on Saturday.”
“I do, it’s just that …” I glanced at the dog lying in his usual spot on the floor. “Riley hasn’t had a walk today and I thought I’d take him before dinner.” Mom frowned slightly at the dog.
“Fine, as long as you go to church.” She grabbed her purse and walked down the stairs and out to the garage.
THE ANNUAL BACK-TO-SCHOOL shopping trip with my mom to Calgary’s Chinook Centre Mall filled me with anxiety and despair, and featured more than a few shouting matches in the clothing aisles over what clothing was appropriate for me to wear. We both agreed that this year, the summer before tenth grade, would be the last time she would take me shopping. Next year, I could go on my own and choose what I wanted.
Secure in the knowledge that I only had to get through this one last trip, I endured Mom’s snide remarks and sarcastic comments about the wrongness of the clothes I preferred, focusing on my pending freedom. Mom patrolled one side of the aisle separating boys’ and girls’ wear, me the other, each defending our chosen theater of war. As I picked out boys’ Levi’s and sweaters, Mom spoke up, her tone overly practiced and a little shrill in an attempt to sound casual. “We should probably get you a little training bra, something with some support,” she said, eyes avoiding mine as she fingered some lace blouses.
“Uh, I don’t have any breasts,” I answered truthfully. “I don’t need one.” My body had been very slow to develop and I hadn’t even had a menstrual period yet. I wouldn’t until I was eighteen. This one. This one looks like a boy.
For the last several weeks I’d cursed myself daily after asking her why my chest hurt. I’d been climbing over a fence during a hide-and-seek game on our street—an intensely competitive nightly battle involving at least ten kids, spanning more than five summers—when my chest pressed against the wood as it always did and I felt some tenderness, a bit like sore muscles. Her excitement had shocked me. “Oh, that means you’re getting breasts,” she practically sang.
That same joyful, celebratory propaganda had dripped from a thinly veiled ad they showed us in school called “Now You’re a Woman” or something like that, made by Kimberly-Clark. All of the sixth-grade girls had been herded into a room to watch it, separated from the boys, who watched their own film. We were strictly warned not to talk to the boys about our film and they weren’t to discuss theirs with us. We were given sample packs of menstrual pads at the session’s end. Watching the film, I’d felt as grossly out of place as I now did in the women’s foundations department.
“Don’t be silly,” Mom scoffed. “You go pick one out—try it on first, you can’t tell by