Part Six: To the end of the world...

Opening the Black Box

Content warning: This part includes depictions of very intense panic, reference to a self-ending attempt.

The shower stall hisses to life behind its shower curtain, and I wait for it to come up to temperature before I jump in. The bathroom is large and empty, and I’m naked, my glasses left on the counter a few feet away. My vision is bad—really bad—so the world is a blur around me. Even through it, I can see that my toes remain red, and I’m fascinated with them.

I know that this is not a terrifically cisgender thing to feel. I feel it anyway. I also notice that I don’t think of it in the inverse sense—that this is a fairly trans thing to feel. I don’t let the thought catch hold in my mind, and I slip into the steaming cascade of the shower.

Washing is simple. Basic soap, basic body. I shave myself blindly, without anything to guide myself except my hand checking the smoothness of my cheeks and chin. I’ve been shaving this way for a few years now. Ever since my hairline really started to seriously thin out, really.

I pause, and stroke my hair. It’s long, and hangs to my shoulder blades. I don’t care for it as well as I should, honestly, especially not as much as I love it. It’s pretty much the only part of my body I’ve ever really loved, the only part that feels entirely right. Its strand-by-strand disintegration has been so bad for me that I spent much of the summer a couple of years ago going from salon to salon, looking for ways to wear it that’d be more flattering.

Mostly, they all said to shave my head. I fled each time in a panic.

I finish shaving, and find that my mind has wandered to the trans place again. I’m feeling emotionally unsteady, off-balance, and don’t resist the drifting attention. I slide to a seat on the floor of the shower and let the hot water run over me. My toes remain red, and I stare at them. The heat is a comfort to me, washing off some of the strain of the morning.

I woke up at five this morning, in the middle of another panic attack. B— held me for nearly two hours as I cried incoherently, drenching our blue sheets and her soft skin in equal measure. After, we’d lain together for an hour longer, without exchanging a word.

“So, if I was trans, I wonder what my name would be,” I wonder aloud, quietly. The answer is instant.

Zoe. Zoe, Zoe, Zoe! To say that I thought about it would be hilariously untrue. The answer was just… there. Unprompted. Like a shining beacon in the back of my head, waiting quietly to be noticed.

I never consider a nonbinary name, and don’t notice that I don’t consider it.

“Zoe.” I say the name out loud. It’s not the first time I’ve said it. My favorite musician’s name is Zoë—close, and sounding the same, but with an umlaut. Not the way I’d spell mine. But this time… This time it’s mine. Or, it could be, I quickly add. I try to believe the addendum. “Zoe,” I say again. I let it hang in the air of the shower, safe from anyone who might possibly hear it.

“That was easy,” I say to myself. “Okay, what about a middle name?” I let my mind wander. The other names I love--Athena, Diana, Jade--just aren’t right with Zoe. They’re too much. Too… too out there. There are no particular traditions on my mom’s side of the family, other than the use of biblical names. Not exactly my speed. Dad’s side passes down names, parent to child. Great-grandpa was Erwin, so Dad was Robert Erwin. I’m Zachary Robert. Maybe, something whispers in my mind, challenging it. I try to make the voice shut up.

Both of Mom’s names feel wrong. I drift upward a generation. Grandma was special to me, a second mother. She lived with us when I was young. I linger on her, on fond memories—watching the news with her, talking about nothing. Her infectious smile, and calm, wise voice. Martha, though. Oof. Martha. I am not a fan of Martha.

Her middle name was Ann, though.

“Zoe Ann,” I try out, even more softly than when I’d said Zoe earlier. Quiet, inside. My mind dances over the letters. Three-three. My birthday. I’ve always loved threes. Something’s slid home in my mind, I realize—a puzzle piece latching onto its neighbors, maybe, or a plug slotting home. It fits. Really fits.

I wash my hair and try not to think about the fact that it took me less than ten minutes to figure out what my name is might be. I know that many trans people go through several names before they find the right one for them. I know that this won’t—wouldn’t be, I correct myself—the case for me. I shut off the shower, and stand quietly, my body steaming in the air conditioning.

“Shit,” I say again, quietly, repeating what I’d said the day before, “I’m in a lot of trouble.” There’s something building in me, a vast, slow certainly, like a glacier, advancing fractionally, but unstoppable in its sheer, colossal weight and scale. I can sense it, but not all of it. It’s just… too big for me right now. I dry myself.

I try crossdressing again, with B—’s help. Outfit after outfit, on, mirror, off. Again, nothing. Nothing but annoyance. Frustration. We’ve gone through her entire wardrobe now, and not a whisper of reaction. It feels like I’m a boy cosplaying as B—. Badly.

This doesn’t fit, I know. Everything else has been slotting together, and my mind is struggling to fight it, to corral it, to pretend it isn’t there. I want it to fit. Want there to be an answer, even if the implications of it fitting are terrifying. If I had the same reaction to dressing as a woman that I had from my toenails, I really wouldn’t have anywhere to hide. That glacier would advance and it’d cover my whole world.

After my failure at crossdressing, B— and I cuddle in bed for a while. I need the comfort. I’m pretty sure she does too. We don’t say anything. The trans thoughts aren’t intrusive anymore. They’re just everywhere. Naming a thing gives it power, and I know I’ve named this thing now. Zoe Ann. It terrifies me. We stay there for hours before we get up again.

“There’s this old saying,” I say after breakfast. We’re in the office now, at our computers. I was going to play a game, but find myself unmotivated. “Searching for the signal in the noise.”

“Yeah?” B— asks.

“It’s from old-school radio. The idea is that there’s all the static in there, and then the thin slivers of the radio signal. You have to hunt for it, and sometimes it’s really faint,” I explain. She turns toward me, swiveling in her chair. I can’t see what she was doing on her computer, and I try to not pry. “I feel like that’s what I’m doing. All this noise, and trying to find what’s a signal.” She nods.

“Are you doing all right?” she asks. She hasn’t asked this yet today, even though she must’ve asked me a dozen times yesterday. I open my mouth to answer, then hesitate.

“Not really, and yes,” I say. “I’m feeling okay right now, but…” I trail off. Our eyes meet, and hold. I don’t finish the thought. I don’t need to. She stands, rounds the end of my tempered glass-and-aluminum computer desk—a very masculine Christmas gift from my father years and years ago—and hugs me. I pull her close, cheek pressed to her breast. It’s comforting, and we hold there, together, passing strength to each other in our touch. She goes back to her computer, but turns and looks at me again before sitting. I try to smile reassuringly, but I can feel how thin my lips are, how tight they’re pressed. She sits. I look at my own screen.

I play Hades for a while, and barely notice doing so. Eventually, I close it and stare at a progression of websites—social media, newsfeeds, public discussions—without really internalizing a word of it. My mind hurts, by heart burns, and I know that something’s wrong. Very wrong. I can’t name it.

I mean, I can. Of course I can. I just can’t let myself name it.

In the early afternoon, an old friend logs on to Discord. J—, who we’d once hoped would be able to officiate our wedding, and who I haven’t seen or talked to in years. B— greets him excitedly, and I find myself joining in. His camera flicks on first, then B—’s, then mine. He’s older, with a graying red beard and a gleaming, bald head. We talk about roleplaying games, our lives—little nothings, and his presence is a relief to me. A distraction from the panic and confusion that my life has suddenly become. A friend.

Until, suddenly, it’s none of those things.

There’s something about all this, something that I can’t identify that’s bringing the panic back. It’s building in me, growing faster and faster. I don’t know what it is, but for some reason, seeing J—’s face, warm and smiling and bearded and bald, up there next to my face, hearing his rich, warm baritone, is a thing that I can absolutely, positively no longer tolerate.

“I’ve got to step out for a bit,” I say. J— waves goodbye to me cheerfully, and B— looks at me as I flee the room, worry in her tired eyes. “Stay,” I whisper, and shake my head. She does. I want to try to handle this myself this time. My feet thunder down the stairs and I retreat into the cool, shaded dark of the downstairs living room. I drop onto a couch and cross my legs. The panic is building inside me again, faster this time.

Okay. Meditation. I fumble my phone out and open the meditation app. The lady on the recording speaks, and I breathe in with her commands, then out. Tears start leaking from the corners of my eyes. I breathe in. Out. A whimper, a small one, but there. In. Out. The tears are coming properly now, and I absolutely cannot hold even the semblance of the thoughts I’m supposed to be holding.

I slump, pause the meditation, and cry softly, holding back as best I can. I rewind the app and try again. In. Out. The tears won’t stop.

B—’s there, and I don’t know when she got here. She stops the meditation and pulls me into her arms. I’m still trying to hold everything in, the sense of wrongness, of profound truth towering over my terrified mind. I’m afraid that if I let it out, I’ll never be able to pull myself back together.

I probably won’t be able to.

“Honey, have you texted M—a yet?” B— asks. I shake my head. “Text her,” B— says sternly. I shake my head again, still crying. She take my shoulders firmly in her string hands, and pushes me away so that I have to look at her.

“I don’t want to…” I trail off between sobs, answering her unasked why. I don’t say the end of it—that I don’t want to need to. She hears it anyway, because she always hears these things.

“You need to,” B— says. I look away, and she grabs my phone from the couch arm and holds it towards me. “If you don’t, I’ll do it for you.” She will, too. Of course she will. I take the phone and open my texting app. I tell M— that I’m having my third panic attack in two days, and I’m not doing so well right now. That I don’t know if I can make it to our next session. That I’m scared and confused.

I expect to have to wait a while for her response, but it comes almost immediately. She asks if I’m having a panic attack right now. I am, of course, and I can’t help but understate its severity in my reply. I’m minimizing, instinctually, and even aside from all of the other terrors I’m facing, I don’t like being the center of this much attention.

And it is worse. So, so much worse than any of the others, and I’m sobbing openly now, sloppily, sniffling as I clutch my phone and B— holds me almost as tightly.

She tells me she can see me tomorrow, at ten. She asks if I can meditate. I’d laugh bitterly at the question if I had any emotional overhead left at all, and tell her I can’t. She tells me to look up the primate dive reflex. We’re going to do that.

I start to do so as she types out her next message. Google says it’s how people instinctively know to not breathe when we go underwater. She tells me to fill a big bowl with water, and then to hold my face under it for as long as I can. To keep diving and diving until my breathing goes back to normal.

I show B— the texts, and she helps me to my feet. My breathing is bad. Really bad. I’m panting like a dog in the late summer heat, except with none of the happiness. We climb upstairs to the kitchen and B— gets out our biggest bowl. The kitchen sink hisses as it fills, and I feel dizzy, tears streaming down my face. I wonder if I’m going to pass out.

“Okay,” I say, the sloshing bowl finally full and on the kitchen counter. I plunge my face into it, squeezing my eyes shut. It works for a moment, but the panic doesn’t recede, and my lungs spasm, desperate for air. I choke. I burst up and gasp, sobbing. B—’s hands on my shoulders are my only tether to reality, the only solid thing in the whole world.

I plunge into the water again. Again, a moment’s pause, and again, my lungs refuse to obey basic biology. I resurface, trying to not choke on the water I’ve sucked into my nose. Again. Again. Again.

Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

You know the name of this. Not a thought, really. A sense, the same glacial, towering sense that’s been pressing down on me for ten days now. My heartbeat accelerates. My breathing turns ragged, gasping. B—’s warm hands are on my shoulder, my side, and I plunge my face back into the cold water of the bowl.

The dive reflex fails completely.

I snort water into my nose. Up and out I come in a burst of coughing, snotty water. B— pulls me close, pulls me tight, and holds me like I’ll slip away if she doesn’t.

I bawl in her arms. I don’t know for how long.

When I come back to myself, we’re downstairs again, curled together on the couch. I’m still a wreck, still gasping out tears, but I can move my hands. I drag up the messaging app on my phone and tell M— that the dive reflex didn’t work. Immediately, she asks if I need to go to the E.R. Her concern pierces the haze just a little, and lets me know how worried she is—this strong, unflappable woman I’ve relied on for so long. Some part of that gives me a little strength. Not a touchpoint, really, but a beacon I can navigate from.

I’ll make it, I tell her.

It’s probably stupid, but I want to be the kind of person who can do this. Who can question—there’s the word I’ve been avoiding, and know better than to do so now—without scaring themselves so badly that they need to be hospitalized. Maybe wanting to be that person is the same as being that person, or maybe it’s just admitting that I’m now actively questioning my gender, but that gives me another beacon.

M— asks me if I’m sure. Texts can’t be italicized, but I can hear the emphasis in my soul.

I hesitate before I answer, then tell her I’ll make it to tomorrow. I hope it’s not a lie.

I silence the phone and set it aside. I lean back into B— again, and the sobs come again. They’re no less sharp, or wracking, but I have more control of myself now, and after a bit, I find I have something to say.

“I’m scared,” I tell B—.

“I can tell,” she says, running her hand over my thinning hair. She means it as a joke, as lighthearted banter, but the fear in her voice cuts it down. She must realize it, too, because she tries again. “It’s going to be okay, honey. You’re gonna be fine.” I shake my head against her breast.

“No, it’s…” I find that I can’t say my fear out loud. I can see it, I know it, but I can’t bear to say it. I’m afraid that I’m trans and that you’re going to leave me. I’m afraid that there’s this part of me that I’ve been running and hiding from forever and that that’s not the part of me that you fell in love with. I’m afraid that you fell in love with something else, someone else, a person who might not even be real.

I get up and pace into the bathroom aimlessly, restless. The fear that the panic attack left behind is filling me—not cresting, like it did before, but still there, still intense. Filling me.

“I…” I say, more loudly than I meant to, but I find I don’t have any words. I pace some more, and B— stands in the doorway of the bathroom, brow creased and eyes worried. “I don’t know what to do, B—,” I finally say. It’s hard to say.

“You don’t have to,” she says, voice soft, soothing.

“Yes, I do!” I burst with emotion, fear feeding my words, raising them. “I’m supposed to know what to do!” It’s a big part of being a guy—having the answer, making the call. You have to know—everything. Somehow.

“It’s okay, honey,” she says, stepping toward me.

“B—, I—” I say, and my mouth is running away without me, completely out of my control. Loud. Shouting, really, and I never raise my voice. “I think there’s a there there!” I’m surprised and terrified by what fell out of my lips, and the tears come again.

She gathers me up into her arms and pulls me back to the green softness of the couch. We sit there for hours, talking softly about nothing, and my attention wanders. I don’t dare name this thing that’s coming to cover me, and I cling to my inability to find a sense of myself with her clothes. I hope that this isn’t real. That I’m Zac. That I’m not Zoe Ann.

Even though I like Zoe Ann so much better than Zac.

—Later—

It’s been hours. B— and I haven’t said much, after the morning’s chaos. I’m back at my computer, because I don’t know what else to do, or where to go.

My mouse wanders toward the icon to start the game I’m playing right now, but on an impulse I click next to it, and my browser opens. A few keystrokes later and Facebook’s blue bar flicks across my screen. On the right, the message queue.

I have a lot of trans friends. A lot. I stare at their names. Stare for quite a long time, actually. C— is awfully close to home, but I have to know. I have to. I message one friend, and then another, and when they don’t respond quickly, I reach out to C—. I ask each of them the question I’m terrified to know the answer to. The one I’m afraid that I need to know the answer to now. The one I’m afraid I already know the answer to.

How do you know for sure if you’re not cis? I can’t use ‘trans’ here. Not yet. It’s too big, too scary.

And I wait. I wait because now this thing is out there, outside the house, a question I’ve asked to people I know, and who now know, by implication, that I’m questioning my gender.

C— responds after a bit, before any of the others. She leads with the truth, the heart of everything—It’s something only you can figure out. Profoundly true. Utterly unhelpful.

We talk, back and forth, for a while. The conversation wanders, and I try to see if there’s common ground between her life and what I’m seeing now. We find ourselves talking about pictures and mirrors, and about how C— could never really see herself in them. Like the person in the pictures of her before she transitioned were someone else.

My gut sinks, and I remember what I said to B— a couple of days ago. About how I always feel like I’m looking at a face wearing a stack of masks, and I’m buried under them so deeply I can’t ever see the real me. I bite my lip, and my tummy churns. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of me that looks like me. I don’t say so. I can’t. Not now.

I jump conversational tracks instead, and tell her a story.

—21 years ago, give or take—

I’m wandering the stacks at a Barnes and Noble, numb and hurting and angry at myself. I’m tired. Tired of hurting. Tired of being rejected for who I am. My fingers trail over title after title of the endless procession of fantasy novels I either have, or have considered, reading to escape this awful meat suit, this awful life.

I tried the other way, with a knife, two months ago, on my thirteenth birthday. Turns out I can’t. That my body will not obey that particular command.

It turned into police and therapists and crisis management, and I’m just so tired of all of this. Tired of being me. I wander away from the Fantasy section, still letting my fingers trail along the colorful spines, as my mind wanders.

I decided to start growing my hair out yesterday. A snap decision, really. I’d been in the bathroom, and tried to hold my gaze in the mirror. It’s been getting hard, lately. I’d pushed my eye-length hair, slashed in the bowl cut that’s popular among boys right now, up and back out of my face. My hands had been wet, though, and so it stayed back for a few moments. Swept back from my face, like it might look if it were long, and pulled into a ponytail, I found it much easier to hold my own gaze. I’d smiled slowly.

Well, I’d always tried to find an excuse to have longer hair. Might as well just do it.

I’m in another section now. Parenting, oddly. Books with babies smiling so widely on the covers that you can almost hear them burbling. My fingers snag on a little book, out of place in the big, glossy tomes. I pull it out. It’s a book of baby names, cream and forest green. No pictures—just text.

I flip to my name. Zachary. Ugh. I’ve always hated it. A page pops out from my finger, and I let it go, hiding my name where I can’t see it anymore. Zac, says the next page.

Huh. I stare at it. Mostly the same, but different.

I… don’t like being me. I don’t like me. I have historically been a pretty bad choice, all things considered. Not just socially or spiritually—existentially.

I stare at the name on the page. Why not try being someone else? Someone, at least, I like hanging out with. Not me. Someone else, someone better. I think on this for a bit. I’m observant. Always watching. Good sense for detail. I can just copy what the boys do that seems to work for them, and bury this… this me under it, where it won’t bother anyone anymore.

Zac, the page says, and I nod. A symbolic start. A new name. The same, but different.

I enforce it religiously on everyone around me. Things get… better, for certain definitions of better. The depression lessens, and settles into more of a constant blanket than an inescapable pit. My problems become someone else’s problems, for the most part.

Part of me understands that this isn’t healthy. I ignore it.

—Now—

There’s a long pause after I tell her that story. I try to wait, but then I keep going anyway. I had this crisis, and the first thing I did after was to change my name and start growing out my hair. It sounds… well, it sounds like the start of a transition, except from boy to different-boy. I note that I hadn’t known that trans people existed back then, much less anything about them.

Neither of us knows what to make of this. There’s a lull. I admit what I couldn’t earlier—that I understand how C— feels about having pictures taken of her. She doesn’t seem to know what to say. The lull stretches.

Another trans friend responds. It's R–, and now she's a professor of queer studies. I just let loose right away. How do you know for sure if you’re not cis? I stare at the question, now sent. For sure carries a lot of weight in that sentence. I squirm in my chair and wish I could call it back, but she’s already writing a response. It’s long, and careful, but encouraging. She hopes this is a time of joy for me, and talks about separating a desire to do things from a need to be things.

I look out the window at the perfect, sunny day outside. There are birds on our tomato planter. I don’t know how I could possibly separate the need to be and the need to do the way I feel right now. I tell her so. After a moment, I ask her if she could try to help me find alternate explanations for the things I’ve noticed so far.

We go back and forth for a long while. She’s a good friend and a serious academic, working at the heart of her scholarly specialization. Everything I send her way has a potential non-trans explanation, supplied quickly and clearly. I feel myself becoming annoyed, grimacing as I type, and I can’t really understand why—it’s like some part of me wants her answers to point towards me being trans. Obviously—to me, at least—this feeling is crazy. I try to ignore it. I finally tell her about the masks feeling. I can’t think of anything else to ask her if this has a different explanation..

There’s a pause. It’s the first one in the conversation. It… stretches. It stretches for a long while.

That, she writes, definitely speaks to a trans identity.

A beat. I stare at the glowing screen, the blue and white of the social media website’s brand identity. She writes that she asked herself many of the same questions I’m asking when she was questioning, and wanted many of the same things I want.

She writes more, but I don’t really register it. The way I feel about my face definitely speaks to a trans identity, and she’s the smartest person I know on anything queer—on most things, if I’m honest with myself. I find myself looking for the panic attack, like before, but it doesn’t come. I’m quiet inside, for the first time in a week and a half. I feel heavy and light at the same time. Scared, indescribably scared, but hopeful and, somehow, excited.

I feel numb, more than anything. It’s like the old Loony Tunes sketch where six people all try to get through the doorway at once and get stuck.

I don’t know how long I stay quiet after she finished writing, but eventually I come back to myself enough to thank her and shut my computer down. I sit alone in the quieted room for a while, thoughts churning and quiet at the same thing. The sun shines in through the window. Yet another perfect summer day.

I stand, eventually, and walk out into the living room. B—’s sitting on one of the couches, crocheting something blue while she watches TV. I walk over and sit next to her, staring blankly into space. She sets down her hook and yarn. After a minute, she turns the TV off. Slowly, I tip to my side and lean against her, and she wraps her arms around me. The tears come, but they’re not the tears I’ve been crying for the last ten days. They’re quiet, sliding down my cheeks soundlessly and onto the teal blue of her T-shirt.

The day passes eventually. I cry in B—’s arms a few more times.

She doesn’t ask me any questions. I don’t offer any answers. I don’t have any that I can bear to speak aloud.

Continued in Part 7.

Author’s Note

The events in this part originally happened over the course of two days. They have been combined here for conciseness. The events, as they actually occurred, had my texting with R— and C— on the day after everything else, but that ended up coming to a rather short section that didn’t stand well on its own.