It Happened to Me: I Told My Boyfriend I Was Born a Boy
I was born a girl but in a boy's body, as media headlines tend to scream when telling stories like mine. Being trans, I've grown up with the understanding that most women are born girls, yet some are born boys. And most men are born boys, yet some are born girls. And if you're ready for this, some people are born girls or boys and choose to identify outside our society's binary system, making them genderqueer.
Regardless, I was born me, and in order to be me, I had to take many steps to affirm my me to myself, my family, and the world around me, and then, once I dealt with my gender change as a teenager, to the men I dated. And this is where it gets tricky, and for some trans women, even dangerous. Though many guys I've dated do not and may never know the gender history of the girl they randomly made out with on St. Marks (this is a whole 'nother post!), I have relayed my story to a select few. But there is only one man whom I wanted to tell my story to from the very first night we met.
It was early Easter morning 2009, and I was tipsy from shots that a pair of British soccer players kept bringing me and my girlfriend. We were at some bar on the Lower East Side, and I was twirling on the dance floor. "This is my song," I remember saying frequently. It was that kind of night. In the midst of my tipsiness, I felt someone looking at me. You know that feeling when you sense there's a singular focus just on you? That's what it was.
As I turned around, I saw the guy, this handsome, handsome man with skin the color of caramel popcorn and almond-shaped eyes. His beauty, to me, was right out of my mind's own sketch pad. He was a fantasy come true, and I wanted him to want me....
