Bad Boy: A Novel - Hardcover

Elliot Wake (formerly known as Leah Raeder) is a transgender author of four novels: Unteachable, Black Iris, Cam Girl, and Bad Boy. Aside from reading his brains out, Elliot enjoys video games, weightlifting, and perfecting his dapper style. He lives with his partner in Chicago.

Bad Boy —1—

FIVE YEARS AGO

VLOG #1: FIRST DAY ON T

REN: Life is ineffably weird.

Hello, Internet. My name is Ren. Despite what my reedy voice and apple-dumpling cheeks might tell you, I’m a boy. A lost boy in the big city, trying to find myself. If you’re watching this, maybe you’re trying to find yourself, too.

Over the past year I’ve watched a thousand videos just like this one. Other guys talking to their laptops, isolated and afraid, launching their voices into the void like messages in bottles. We’re all stranded on the desert islands of ourselves, sending missive after missive and hoping someone will find us, and reply:

Message received.

[Jump cut.]

Guess I’ll give you the basics. I’m nineteen. College sophomore. Gender studies major. Yep, the only boy in class. That’ll be fun later, with a beard. I live with my best friend and we both live with the ghost of myself. You can’t shake a haunting unless you face it, so in the interests of exorcism and YouTube view counts I’m documenting my transition.

Today was my first day on testosterone.

Here’s how it works: You go to a gender therapist and say, “I feel like I’ve been given a life sentence, and the prison cell is my own skin.” You tell them the bars make a double X pattern. The prison uniform is a pointlessly wide pelvis and unnecessary breast tissue atop your pecs. It’s designed to dehumanize you. Make you feel both trapped in and disconnected from yourself. The therapist will say, “How long have you identified as a man?” And even though you don’t really feel like a man inside, but more of a boy, scared and confused and alone, you’ll say, “My whole life.” Because you want testosterone more than anything. You need it. To survive.

Then, with a bit of luck, they’ll sign a letter certifying you as genderfucked, and you’ll get T. The wonder drug. The problem-curing, life-fixing panacea.

I’m kidding. Testosterone isn’t going to fix my issues. It’ll cause a hundred new ones. Male-pattern baldness, BO, acne. I’ve done my research. Being a man isn’t all six-pack abs and sultry stubble. Honestly, manhood is pretty fucking unsexy.

But it’s the only thing I have left to try before I take a razor to my wrists.

[Jump cut.]

Some trans guys count their first day of T as their new birthday. So here I am, world. Your newest baby boy, born December 13. Sprung fully formed from my own forehead, Athena-style.

I’m a mythology nerd, and there’s this myth that speaks to me, haunts me . . .

This is, uh, kinda hard to talk about, actually. Maybe I—

[Clears his throat.]

My biggest issue with mythology is that it’s so steeped in rape. Most of the gods and kings were total shitlords who terrorized women. Other gods took pity and transformed those women into plants so they could escape sexual assault.

Let that sink in. Better to be a fucking plant than a woman in ancient Greece.

My relationship with mythology is cagey, but there’s this myth I’m obsessed with about a woman called Caenis. Like so many others, Caenis was raped by Poseidon. Afterward she asked to be changed into a man so she couldn’t be raped again. Apparently Poseidon drew the line at sodomy.

So Caenis became Caeneus, a fearsome warrior. A man so strong he couldn’t be harmed by normal weapons. To defeat him, a crafty centaur buried him beneath a mountain of logs. He’s still there, tossing the trunks aside one by one, clawing his way out. Nothing can stop him. Nothing can hold him down. Someday he’ll be free.

I’m Caeneus, if that wasn’t obvious.

[Clears his throat.]

My voice isn’t usually this hoarse. Two weeks ago, I put a belt around my neck and stepped off a chair in my closet. My best friend found me and performed CPR. No one knows how long I was deprived of oxygen. Not long enough for measurable brain damage, but long enough that I still don’t have sensation in my chest. Which is actually kind of nice. Lets me forget I have breasts.

[Jump cut.]

This is probably the thousandth trans-guy-taking-T video you’ve watched. You’re seeking answers, like me. Reassurance. Permission. You want to know if this is what you should do. If it’ll really make you happy, quiet that scream inside that no one else can hear.

I don’t know.

I’m not one hundred percent sure it’s right for me, either.

I just know something has to change. I have to change.

People make ugly choices to stay sane inside prison. When your body is the cell, it feels like your only freedom is to die. But that’s bullshit. There’s another way out. A safe way. See a fucking therapist, okay? Don’t be like me, don’t wait till it nearly kills you. I spent years hurting myself, cautiously, shallowly, trying to resist that final deep cut into a vein.

I hurt myself to remember: I am this body. As much as I hate it, it’s me.

I have to serve my time here. Make peace with it.

If I don’t, if I can’t—

[Jump cut.]

But I am. I’m taking back control.

No more self-harm. Now there’s a silver bullet of testosterone in my bloodstream, and I didn’t even have to beg a god. Thanks, Obamacare.

So this is it. The girl part dies. A little boy wakes up, confused and alone. Irrevocable changes are happening inside his cells and he’s stuck on the island of himself, sailing messages out into the wide blue nothing.

This is what they say:

Somebody, please listen.

My name is Ren. I’m one day old. I’m a lost little boy.

Please find me.