Be Myself! - 21. It's (Not) About Your Urethra

The rest of the summer flew by considerably quickly. Five days after my birthday Henry was freed from the casts on his arms and he had to start the long road to recovery through physiotherapy. Doctors estimated he would have full use of his arms by January of this coming year. Other than that, I managed to spend time with my friends by telling my father that I was going to the library every day. He was glad to know that I had chosen to carry on with my studies during what was supposed to be break time and did not ask any more questions. In the past I would have felt guilty for lying so blatantly to him, but now that I had nightmares almost every night and felt claustrophobic in my own room, there was no way I could feel that way again. I was almost proud of my rebellion, even if I feared the consequences of being caught.

As per usual, I spent most of my days at the Viñas’s. We usually just hung out and played games on Olivia’s computer, but sometimes she wanted to do more ‘intimate’ things. I felt weird when she started kissing and gently nudging me towards the bed; after all her parents and little brother were home and could hear everything.

“You don’t need to worry,” she told me the first time it happened. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, everyone was home, and she had started kissing my neck and jaw while I tried to solve a tricky mathematical puzzle on the computer. “Mum and dad go deaf when they’re working, and Sam is playing some boring shooting game at maximum volume. He wouldn’t even hear a nuclear explosion if it happened.”

“But still…” There was no arguing with her. Soon we were on her bed, certain key articles of clothing were disposed off in an indelicate manner, and a bottle of lube and a ribbed condom were shoved in my face. By the time it was over, the presence of two adults and an eight-year-old kid in nearby rooms was no longer worrying me.

Later that day Olivia gave me some advice on how to trick my father about the fake pregnant girlfriend. She got Sam to text me posing as the girlfriend’s mother telling me that the girl had an accident on the road (drunk driving), and died violently and painfully with her ‘baby’. It was obvious that my real girlfriend’s brother was having lots of fun describing the injuries in their full, horrific details. We decided not to stop him, because I had already established that my fake girlfriend was hated by her parents. I was still impressed at Sam’s vast knowledge of the human body and all its weaknesses, though. He was the first eight-year-old whom I had heard describing perfectly what happens to a person’s burst pancreas.

I showed my father the text and he seemed relieved. Thankfully, he decided not to try to contact the parents, saying that the sooner we cut them from our lives, the better. He seemed pretty happy to know that the mother of his supposed first grandchild (and said grandchild), had died because of her own irresponsibility. He thought it was fitting and she completely deserved it. He left my room laughing, calling my mother to tell her the ‘great news’.

I could not help but imagine him laughing after ensuring his poof of a son was no longer part of this world.

(...)

School started again in August, before our exam results arrived. Advised by my father, I had given up Music, Geography, and Biology. Physics had become my highest priority, but I was still expected to excel in Maths, English, Chemistry, and German. Now that our subjects had been cut from eight to five, I had at least one period of each class every day, but I no longer shared any classes with my friends. These first couple of weeks in August were a kind of provisory arrangement where students were allocated to classes based on the teacher’s estimate of their exam grades. All of my teachers were sure I would be perfectly capable of going for the Higher classes, but I had to take Chemistry on Intermediate 2 level because of the way class choices were laid out. If I were going to take all classes as Highers, I would have to take Geography instead of Chemistry. My father was adamant that I should drop all useless social subjects and focus my attention on worthy ones, even if at a lower level than expected. It would be fine as long as I dropped Chemistry in my sixth year, when the number of classes would be cut from five to three.

The week before classes re-started, Ariadne told us that her mother was preparing a ‘surprise’ for her students in this next school year. Since she refused to tell us exactly what this surprise was, some of us tried to guess. All of Jean’s suggestions were somehow related to sex, including converting the ‘sex toilet’ into an actual ‘sex room’, and having orgies during P.E. as a form of ‘workout’.

“Actually, it is related to sex,” Ariadne surprised us all. “Just not the way you think.” She left it at that. Not even Helena managed to persuade her to spill the secret, so that when school started again, the first thing we did upon arrival was to gravitate towards her.

“Argh, this yellow tie looks horrible on me!” we heard a girl say as she passed by our group. She was tall, blond, wore a relatively short skirt, and a lot of make-up. Beside her walked the first dark-skinned student, apart from me, that I had seen in the whole school during the last five years. They must be new students.

“I agree, the yellow ties suck,” Jean said after the blond girl and her friend had gone. Our school ties reflected which year we were in: first and second years wore a yellow, blue and white tie, third and fourth years had a blue and yellow tie, and fifth and sixth years moved on to something completely yellow. It was not a vivid yellow, but depending on the angle it looked like we were wearing shiny gold strips on our uniform. “Though you still look sexy in them!” Jean pulled Henry by his tie and started a wild make-out session. By now everyone in the school was so used to it that not even one eyebrow was raised at the scene.

“Ed, if you don’t need me anymore I’ll go join my friends,” Emma told her older brother. It was her first day in Secondary School, so Mr Smith had asked Edward to look after her. However, Emma did not seem like she needed looking after at all.

“Yeah, go for it.” Edward was not keen on babysitting either. Emma said goodbye to us and disappeared in the crowd.

“Assembly is about to start. We should grab some seats…” Ariadne told us. Knowing that the ‘surprise’ was going to be announced during this assembly, we hurried to grab seats in the first two rows. Ariadne, Helena, Hannah, and Edward sat in the front, while Jean, Henry, Olivia and I found places behind them. The guys continued their make-out session until the headmistress was ready to speak. Olivia took the chance to touch my leg suggestively, and for some reason I saw no problem returning the gesture with a kiss on her cheek.

“Welcome back, all of you. I hope you had a good summer break,” the headmistress began. Someone behind me began tapping the ground impatiently and I turned to ask then to stop. It was the blond girl from before, but her friend was nowhere to be seen. She apologised and grabbed the hem of her skirt. She seemed very tense. “I have a couple of the usual announcements to make, but before that I would like to introduce you all to a very special student. Please give a warm welcome to Charlie Higgs!”

It took the mass of students a while to understand what was happening and start applauding. We had never had a student introduced in such a manner before. Teachers maybe, but students, no. I was probably not the only one surprised to see the blond girl’s friend appearing beside the headmistress.

“Hi everyone. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Charlie, I’m in sixth year, and I’m a boy and I’m a girl.” Charlie’s first statement was met with confused stares from just about everyone in the hall. The new student was tall and leaning on the skinny side, wearing the traditional male uniform (in other words: trousers), and smiling gently at everyone’s confusion. Charlie’s voice was higher than I would have expected from a sixth-year male student.

“Have you got a dick?” Jean shouted from the audience. Everyone in the vicinity shot him dirty looks, but Charlie did not seem offended or even surprised.

“It’s precisely because of this kind of question that I was asked to speak here today,” Charlie answered. “You see, it’s about time that schools start to teach students that there is a big difference between what is between your legs and who you actually are.” More confused stares. Charlie was still smiling, probably liking our reaction. It was difficult to tell. “What I mean is that the only thing our genitals decide about us is how long our urethra is.” Some of us laughed, Olivia and the girl behind me included. “It’s true that most of us go through life feeling completely happy with what was said about our gender when we were born. How many of you feel unhappy about the gender that people treat you by?”

Charlie was probably not expecting anyone to raise their hands, because when Olivia raised hers the gesture was met with some surprise. I looked at my girlfriend and noticed she was blushing intensely and staring at the ground. Her free hand gripped her trousers tightly.

“It’s good to not be alone,” Charlie finally said, once Olivia’s unexpected reaction had dawned on everyone. “I was never happy with what doctors decided I should be when I was born. It happens sometimes. As I said before, our genitals are just a body part. They cannot tell us whether we like to play with dolls, build sand castles, or play football. I can’t go into too much detail now, but basically what happens is not that our genitals decide who we are, but that the people around us decide how they are going to treat us and what they are going to teach us based on our genitals, and then we grow up thinking that naturally the genitals have a huge influence on who we are.”

All around us people seemed to be going through a lot of effort to digest Charlie’s words. I felt like there was a giant knot on my brain preventing my neurons from communicating properly, not least because the alarmingly frequent use of the word ‘genitals’. Charlie did not seem bothered by the general confusion, though.

“You don’t have to worry about understanding everything now. As our headmistress will tell you later, we’re going to spend the year doing lots of work on gender identity and gender expression, so that by this time next year you’ll be ready to give the same speech that I’m giving now.” This new statement was met with a mixture of horror and disbelief, but not even that made Charlie stop smiling. “What is important for you to know now is that not everyone who is declared a girl at birth feels like a girl, and that not all people declared boys at birth feel like one. It’s not something bad, and those feelings are not just a ‘phase’ or something that will ‘go away’ with time. What decides your gender is what you feel, not your body. So if someone tells you they feel like a boy even though they lack an elongated urethra, you treat them like a boy. You probably have noticed by now that no ‘showing of genitals’ happens when we meet someone new. It’s not like we shake hands and then drop our trousers or lift our skirts, so what does it matter what our pee mechanism looks like when we’re interacting with people?”

Ariadne was nodding furiously, Helena was grinning, and Hannah was nodding slightly, though much slower than Ariadne. Henry’s mouth was slightly agape and his eyes shone like he had just discovered the secret of humanity. Edward furrowed his eyebrows until they almost met in the middle of his forehead. Jean was shaking his head and smiling. As for Olivia, her eyes were quickly filling with water. She refused to look anywhere above her own knees and the grip on her trousers had become so strong her hands turned white.

“All of that was just to say, as I stated during my introduction, that I’m a girl and I’m also a boy. It’s not as confusing as it seems once you realise that it’s up to us to decide who we are. I have days when I feel like a girl, and days when I feel like a boy. I’m ‘gender-fluid’, which means that my gender identity is kind of like water in a tank, flowing here and there, back and forth, always changing. Today I’m feeling like a boy, so feel free to use male pronouns with me.”

As soon as Charlie spoke about pronouns, my brain gave a huge sigh of relief. At that moment I realised that during his entire speech I had been trying to figure out what to call Charlie and how to treat him. In a sense, I had been caught up trying to figure out what Charlie was in order to calculate how I should take his words and how I should act around him. Back when I was not sure of his pronouns, I felt like I had been paralysed by confusion, by the realisation that I did not know how to relate to an individual because, as Charlie had put it, I did not know what was between his legs. Charlie’s words slowly began to make sense. I felt that I had understood the main point of his speech, but my brain had not processed the specific details yet.

“Some days I will feel more like a girl. I might wear a skirt if I feel like it. You’re welcome to use female pronouns then. Or if gets too confusing for you, just stick to whatever pronoun comes to mind. I’m not particularly fussed.”

“I still don’t know if you have a penis!” Jean shouted, making some people laugh. Charlie rolled his eyes.

“And you will carry on not knowing. It’s kind of the point of this whole thing.”

“But then how do I decide if I want to have sex with you or not?” Mr Smith got up from his chair to stop Jean, but the headmistress told him to sit down. Charlie seemed to have it under control.

“By getting to know me. Though if sex for you only depends on the amount of tissue around someone’s urethra, then I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to have sex with you anyway.” Jean blinked a couple of times, but could not think of anything to say to that. Charlie smirked.

“Anyway, the whole point of having me here is so that you can really think about the idea that genitals don’t define identity, and that there’s actually a lot more to gender than being just male or female. You’re welcome to find me during the breaks to ask questions, but it won’t be long until we have special lessons about it. Hopefully you’ll be amazed by the diversity of identities that exist out there, and then you can help to create a world where all this diversity can be safely expressed. The headmistress asked me to remind you that this school doesn’t tolerate bullying of any kind, so if you try to be nasty to me or to anyone else, she won’t like it and you won’t like her punishment.”

Charlie seemed done with his speech. The headmistress stood up to join him at the podium, but before Charlie left he had one more thing to say.

“Oh, and I think it is very fortunate that I’m feeling male today, because based on my personal experience, I’m never really taken seriously when I’m a wearing a skirt. Thanks for listening.”