Adam (19 page)

“Cool, thanks,” said Adam. He had never used an electric razor before. His dad had one, but he'd always been too embarrassed to ask to borrow it.

“You're gonna need a good shirt, too,” said Ethan, eyeing Adam's grubby T-shirt. “Hold up.” Ethan ran into his room and came back with a faded blue flannel. “It's Steven Alan,” he said, handing it to Adam.

“Thanks,” said Adam. He put his arms through the soft flannel and buttoned up over his T-shirt. The flannel smelled like fresh detergent.

“Nice,” said Ethan. He looked up at Adam's hair. “Now product.” Ethan grabbed a small black tub of some stuff off the sink counter, dug his fingers in, and mussed it into Adam's bangs. Adam felt that tingling feeling again, like with the stewardess on the airplane when he was eight. Ethan concentrated on Adam's hair, separating strands into perfectly messy clumps. Adam stood very still, not wanting Ethan to stop.

“All right,” said Ethan, standing back to admire his work, “that looks good.” He twisted Adam around to face the mirror.

Adam couldn't help smiling. For like the first time ever, he actually liked how he looked.

***

Adam lay in bed. It was midnight. His date with Gillian was in exactly eleven hours. Eleven hours to decide whether or not he was going to tell her.

If he decided
not
to tell her, it was very possible she would ask him questions about being trans, in which case he needed to be prepared to answer those questions. He couldn't just respond with,
“Oh, actually I'm not trans.”
He needed to be able to consistently pretend to be trans until the right moment came to tell her he wasn't.

But what sort of questions would Gillian ask?

“Why did you decide to be trans?”

“I just always felt like a boy inside.”

Well, at least that was true.
What else, what else . 
.
 .
Adam's mind was blank. He dragged his laptop onto the bed, clicked on his sister's Facebook profile, and then clicked on Boy Casey's.
Shit.
It was private. The only thing Adam could remember from when he'd seen it before was “
ABOUT ME:
I'm an artist
.”

Adam and Gillian weren't Facebook friends yet, but if they became them, he could always adjust his info as needed. Or maybe he'd just say he doesn't “do” Facebook. Yeah, that was cooler anyway. He didn't have to worry about her searching for him on the Internet either. When you typed “Adam Freedman” into Google, about five million other people popped up first. He once scrolled through fifty-nine pages of entries before finding his name on a list for a Claremont kids' doubles tennis tournament from three years ago. There wasn't even a picture.

Adam clicked over to Google and typed in “trans guy.” The first search entry was a
Wikipedia
page.

 

A trans man, trans guy, FTM is a transsexual or transgender man: a person who was assigned a female gender identity at birth, but who feels that this is not an accurate or complete description of themselves and consequently identifies as male.

 

Duh.
This wasn't helpful. Adam noticed a YouTube video and clicked on that. A guy with shaggy blond hair wearing a hooded sweatshirt sat on a bed. He was talking about how he'd just hung out with his cousin, a “bio guy.”

 

“I hadn't seen him since we were, like, ten, and we're both twenty-one now. At first, I couldn't stop thinking about it, just how unfair it is he got to be born with a penis, and I didn't. And wondering if he thought less of me. But once we started talking about it, he was pretty awesome. He said he has mad respect for trans men, because we've had to struggle, and he even said he's actually wondered what it's like to have a vagina. . . . He was just really open. I told him how it's just unbearable sometimes . . . having the wrong part down there.”

 

Adam's hand reached into his boxers and over his penis.

 

“Like when I'm having sex with my girlfriend—my fiancée—and I want to ejaculate, but I can't . . .”

 

The guy's name was Luke Trevor. He looked completely like a real guy. Adam never would have thought he was trans. He clicked on another
luketrevor
video. The title was
T-Shot Day
, and it showed Luke about to inject himself with T.

 

“I'm finally beginning to dig how I look. More like a man and not a little tween anymore.”

 

Luke plunged the syringe into his thigh and Adam winced.

 

“My dose is one hundred milligrams a week. Half a cc.”

 

Adam grabbed a magazine and pen off the floor. He flipped open to a page and wrote in the margin: “100 mg a week. Half a cc.”
“How much T do you take?”

YouTube had dozens of
luketrevor
videos. Adam clicked on
Becoming Me: Music Video
. A song played over a series of shots of Luke: As a little kid. As a teenager on a BMX bike. In a hospital bed after surgery. Hanging out with friends. Standing on a cliff, arms raised in the air. Adam paused the video on the cliff shot. Luke was shirtless and his chest looked like Boy Casey's had. Curved scars underneath lopsided nipples. If Adam made out with Gillian, he would have to keep his shirt on.
Make out with Gillian.
Adam's heart sped up, and he replayed the subway-stop kiss. The video ended with white letters on a black screen:
AGAINST ALL ODDS: JUST BE YOU.

Adam continued clicking on
luketrevor
videos. He was utterly entranced. Before he knew it, two hours had gone by. There were videos of Luke and his friend Alex—also a trans guy. Luke getting a piggyback ride from Alex, or Alex pretending to have anal sex with Luke. There was a video from Luke's birthday: “What's up from Kansas City! It's my birthday. That's all. Just wanted to capture the moment . . .” Videos of Luke's mother and grandmother, both avoiding looking into the camera, Luke talking about how much he loves them. A video of Luke telling his “coming out” story—how he'd tried to pee standing up as a little kid and his babysitter freaked and told his parents. Adam wrote down “tried peeing standing up” on his magazine.

Then the videos took a dark turn. There was one posted by someone named
donttrustluketrevor
, a static picture of a freeway overpass. The video was silent, and over the image of the freeway, little boxes of text popped up and then disappeared:
“Luke Trevor is a fraud” . . . “a phony” . . . “a scammer” . . . “a traitor.”
Adam felt an eerie chill. He liked Luke Trevor. Why was somebody saying all this stuff? . . . Who
was
Luke Trevor?

Adam clicked on a video from only three weeks ago, titled
Think You Know Me? Think Again
. Luke was facing the camera, shirtless. His blond hair was slicked back, and he was wearing sunglasses. It kind of looked like he was going bald.

 

“I just need to say that there's a lot more to me than Luke Trevor. A lot of people are angry because their penis pump kits aren't working, but what people don't understand is that—”

 

What was he talking about?
Adam wrote “penis pump kit” on his magazine.

 

“—if there's a problem with your pump kit, then you need to take it up with the manufacturer, not me. I agreed to promote it, but that's where my involvement ends. I know there are a lot of people who hate me, but you know what? They don't know the slightest thing about me. There's a lot more to life than the Internet, so just because you saw me on YouTube, don't assume—”

 

Adam clicked the video off. He was starting to feel nauseous. It was 2:37
A.M.
and he needed to get to sleep. He'd gotten so involved in Luke Trevor's life, he'd barely accumulated any useful information. Adam clicked on one more video titled
Metoidioplasty vs. Phalloplasty
by Luke's friend Alex.

Unlike Luke, you could kind of tell that pudgy Alex used to be a girl. He sat on a living-room couch.

 

“So I've finally decided what kind of bottom surgery I want. I'm going to go with the metoidioplasty. It just makes the most sense for me right now. And I can always get a phalloplasty later on if I want.”

 

Adam remembered a conversation Casey and June had had once.

“Has he had bottom surgery?”

“No! Most trans guys don't.”

Apparently Casey did
not
know everything about trans guys. Adam wrote “decided to go with metoidioplasty.” His eyes were closing and opening in that heavy, sleep-bleary way. He read over his list:

 

100 mg a week. Half a cc.

tried peeing standing up

penis pump kit

decided to go with metoidioplasty

 

He tried to run the words through his brain like he did when he was cramming for a test.
100mgaweek.Halfacc.triedpeeingstand- ingup.penispumpkit.decided to go with metoidioplasty.

His eyes were really closing. His head was a hundred pounds. He read through the list one more time, then did it once from memory. Then he ripped the page out of the magazine, got out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom, shredded the page into pieces, and flushed them down the toilet.

Adam got back in bed, crawling into his sleeping bag. And as he finally allowed himself to close his eyes, he saw the phrases
100 mg a week. Half a cc. Peeing standing up. Penis pump kit. Metoidioplasty
appear in little text boxes over an image of Gillian's face.

THE DATE
. Adam woke with a start. He looked at his cell phone: 8:59
A.M.
His alarm would be going off in exactly one minute. It was uncanny the way he'd woken up on his own, predicting the time. It must mean something. He checked the phone again, but there was no text from Gillian. Why would she text? They were seeing each other in two hours.

Adam got up and went to the bathroom. Ethan—who went to bed around 5:00
A.M.
and rose around 2:00
P.M.
—had left his electric razor out for Adam to use. He'd also placed the hair-product stuff right next to it: Bumble and bumble. Adam turned the razor on and stared at it buzzing. He brought it closer, and then even closer to his upper lip, his hand trembling a little, terrified he would slip and get a gash in his face and have to tell Gillian his mom had died so he couldn't make it. But once he pressed it to his skin, it stopped being scary. It felt smooth and effective. When he finished, there was only one small pinhead of blood. He dabbed it with his finger and put it on his tongue.

After showering, Adam wrapped a towel around his waist and dug into the hair product the way Ethan had and tried to muss it into his bangs. He closed his eyes and imagined Ethan was doing it. Back in his room, he got dressed in his Diesel jeans and a black T-shirt with Ethan's blue flannel over it. He buttoned up the flannel slowly.
Tell her. Don't tell her.
He laced up his white Adidas extra tight. Ethan had said: “Once you're in it, it will just all be happening and you'll know what to do.” His mind flashed to walking to the subway with Gillian, the warm dark air, the glowing green subway bulb. “You're so cute . . .” she had said.
Gillian.
In just forty-nine minutes he was going to see Gillian! A wave of anticipation swelled in his chest and crashed with an elated spray.

***

Adam took the L to Union Square, transferred to the 4 downtown, and got off at Fulton. The address was 11 Fulton Street.

Outside the station, though it was a random Wednesday, the streets were dizzy with people. South Street Seaport was apparently some sort of tourist destination because vendors selling
I
♥
NY
shirts, and Statue of Liberty models were everywhere, shoving American flags in Adam's face as he tried to get his bearings. He had no idea which way to walk. It was even hotter than usual surrounded by all these people. Adam felt the hair product dripping onto his forehead and down the side of his nose. The T-shirt plus flannel combination was killing him. His entire chest was dense with sweat.

Adam checked his phone: 10:48. He could not risk being late and plowed through the people in a direction he prayed was right. He pulled the collar of his black T-shirt up from underneath Ethan's flannel and wiped the hair product off his face.
BODIES
. There it was! The same image from the website: a skin-stripped, muscle-and-bones guy sitting in the position of that famous sculpture
The Thinker.
And then he saw her—standing under the poster, looking at her phone. Was he late? Adam quickly checked his phone again: 10:52. No, she was just looking at her phone to look busy. Like he does. Like everyone does. Adam was filled with love for every single person on earth. He walked closer. Gillian's red hair was in a short, blunt ponytail and her lips pouted out, looking serious. She was wearing a tight, low-cut blue-and-white striped tank top and short black cutoffs. Smooth bare legs. Adam felt so instantly turned on, he wanted to take a photo of her, be transported back to his bedroom, beat off to the photo, and then be transported back to this moment so he could talk to her like a normal person and not the crazed sex addict that he was. Gillian looked up and smiled at him. He hustled over.

“OK,” she said. “So this might be kind of weird, but I just feel like since it
exists
, I should see it, you know?”