Be Myself! - 50. Oliver's Sweet Sixteen

“I can’t go in there! This was a horrible idea!”

Oliver sat on his bed with his head down to almost his knees. His hair was all over the place because he kept pulling on it in frustration, and he rubbed his sweaty palms on his trousers so often that they made them damp. His voice came out in high shrieks that made him want to punch his own vocal chords.

Ms Savage sat by her son’s side, pulling him closer to her. “All the guests have arrived. They’re worried that it’s been an hour and you haven’t appeared at your own party yet.”

Oliver buried his face in his mother’s chest. “I can’t! I can’t face them! I’m not ready!”

Charlie and Luce, the only other members of the LGBTI Club who were in the room besides me, exchanged worried glances. It was Charlie who spoke. “Are you afraid they won’t take it well?”

“I’m afraid of everything!” Oliver started to cry, and we hugged him. He had spoken about his fears so much in the last few days that I understood them well, even if my cisgender privilege meant I would never know exactly what it felt like to be in his position. The rest of Oliver’s flat was crowded with all the people Sam showed me in his family tree (I still could not remember their names, but at least I could tell Mr Viñas’ siblings apart from their spouses). Mr Viñas told them ‘Olivia’ was preparing a surprise, and so ‘she’ would take a while to come out of ‘her’ room. This made the guests excited, but Mr Viñas felt so guilty for having to misgender his own child that he went into Oliver’s room, hugged his son for five minutes, and cried with him.

Because of Mr Viñas’ announcement, everyone undoubtedly expected to see a young woman on her way to adulthood emerge from the room dressed in her finest clothes and showing off her femininity. They would never guess the truth, and Oliver would completely destroy their expectations. When he finally showed up, his family would misgender him, call him by a name he could not stand to hear, and question why he was wearing black cargo trousers with a formal black shirt instead of an expensive dress. Oliver would be hurt before he could explain everything, and it would just make the whole thing harder. And then, once he managed to come out to everyone, he would have to wait and see if his family would accept him, or dismiss and confront his identity. If each rejection was like a dagger to Oliver’s heart, he was leaving himself open to a massacre.

We let go of the hug, and Luce rubbed Oliver’s back. “It won’t be as bad as you think. Charlie and I are here to help answer questions and make sure they understand you’re not just going through a phase.”

“Yeah, we’ll give them a whole Trans 101 course if we need to!” Charlie agreed.

Oliver smiled slightly. “Thanks.”

“We’re all here for you.” Charlie smiled too.

Oliver seemed to calm down considerably after Luce and Charlie’s reassurances. I was relieved to see him smiling again and wiping the tears off his face, but this mood did not last long. Just as we were beginning to feel that everything was really going to be fine, Sam barged into the room and ran straight into his brother’s arms. He seemed about to cry too. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to screw up! I didn’t want to do it, but I did, and now everyone is asking questions, and I don’t know what to do!”

“What happened, Sam?” his mother asked, but Sam kept holding onto his brother and ignoring her.

“I’m really sorry! Really, really, sorry!”

Ms Savage put a hand on Sam’s shoulder to make him look at her. “Please tell us what happened. We won’t be angry at you.”

Sam took a deep breath and looked at his brother and mother before lowering his head and avoiding eye contact with everyone. The more he spoke, the quicker his words came out, so by the end I could barely understand him. “I forgot I wasn’t supposed to call Oliver by his real name in front of everyone, and Jack heard me calling him my brother and now everybody is confused and asking questions and Dad is trying to sort it out but I don’t know what to do and I know I messed up and I’m really sorry.”

“Oh, Sammy…” Ms Savage hugged her youngest child, and he cried too. “It’s ok. We know you didn’t do it on purpose.”

But despite Ms Savage’s words, Oliver did not look like it was ok. All the colour drained from his face, and for a second he looked like he was going to get angry at his brother, but instead he slumped his shoulders and let his back fall against me on the bed, all without letting go of Sam. “Great. Now they know, and I’ll have to go in there and explain everything even though I’m not ready.”

“I’m sorry!”

Oliver’s answer to Sam came in a cold monotone that was painful to hear. “There’s nothing we can do about it now.” He disentangled from Sam’s desperate embrace and got up from the bed. I followed him out of the room with Luce and Charlie closely behind, but Ms Savage and Sam took longer to come out. Oliver marched down the corridor to the living room like he was trying really hard not to turn back. The faint chatting we heard coming from the room stopped as soon as he came in.

The living room had been decorated with helium balloons and Happy Birthday banners. The table was covered with party snacks and drinks (though all alcoholic beverages were hidden in the kitchen), and all the chairs we had in the house were scattered around so that the adults (and Ariadne) could chat in small groups. All couches and armchairs were occupied by Oliver’s six cousins, plus Edward, Emma, Hannah, and Helena, who were being entertained by some kind of videogame competition. Henry and Jean were nowhere to be seen. The room was dangerously crowded, but nobody seemed to mind. At least Ms Savage did not have siblings, so the lack of room was solely the Viñas’ fault.

As soon as we came in, though, all eyes fell on Oliver. Adults stopped speaking mid-sentence, and the children paused their game. The few seconds of silence lasted forever as Oliver’s family recognised his face, but not his outfit. Some furrowed their brows in confusion, others stared so intensely that it made even me uncomfortable.

“Hi, everyone…” Oliver managed to say, in a weak and high-pitched voice. Just as I thought the situation could not get any more awkward, one of Oliver’s older cousins, a boy around twelve years old dressed in skulls and other creepy things, was the first to put into words what everybody else was probably thinking.

“Why did Sam say you’re his brother now? Is this a birthday prank to give Abuelita a heart attack?”

“No!” Oliver shouted and looked at the grandmother in question. She did not look too old, with her hair dyed black and only a few age marks on her face. She was wearing the most elegant outfit among her family members, and had a dignified air about her. She sat at the opposite end of the room and looked like she was not sure of what was happening, but smiled to Oliver when their eyes met.

The boy continued to press Oliver for answers, though. “Then what is it? Why are you dressed like a guy? Nobody tells me shit!”

“Jack!” One of Mr Viñas’ brothers turned to the boy. “I told you not to swear. If you let your cousin speak, you might get the answers you want.”

Now that I knew the boy’s name, I realised he was the one to whom Sam kind of outed Oliver. Why couldn’t Sam choose one of his less intimidating cousins to blurt secrets out to? Anyone else would’ve made this moment less horrible.

Oliver seemed slightly more relaxed after his uncle spoke, though, probably because the man managed to put down Jack while not using his old name or any kind of gendered pronoun. This boosted his confidence enough for him to start his coming out speech. “Thanks, Uncle Juan.” Oliver smiled slightly, but he was soon frowning again. “I need to tell you something really important. I chose to do this now at my birthday party because you would all be here and so I wouldn’t have to do this more than once. I’m not sure if it was the best idea now that it’s happening and I can’t run away from it, but…”

Oliver’s abuelita gave him an encouraging smile. “Just say what you have to say, my dear.”

Oliver took a deep breath and tried to smile back at his grandmother, but once again it failed. He reached for my hand and squeezed it until it hurt, then looked at all his relatives before setting his gaze on a random point above the window. “I want to say that a few months ago I realised why I was always so uncomfortable doing girl’s stuff. It’s not just that I don’t like girly things. There are some people who… who don’t feel like the gender they were assigned at birth was right. They’re not who their bodies seem to say they are. Until now, I didn’t think this kind of thing existed, but now that I know it’s possible to be that way, I…” Oliver bit his lip. Some of the adults leaned forward slightly in anticipation, but Oliver took some time to continue. “What I mean is… I’m a guy. I lived almost sixteen years in the wrong gender, and I didn’t realise it. I’ve changed my name to Oliver, and I… I don’t want to be called a girl anymore. It hurts.”

“What is this?” a woman dressed in an elegant black dress asked. As far as I could remember, she was one of Mr Viñas’ sisters. She turned to her brother. “What does she mean, Leo?”

“It’s not ‘she’ anymore, Nora,” Mr Viñas answered. He pulled Oliver to his side, knowing he would be hurt by his aunt’s misgendering. “Oliver has been our son for the last two months.”

“Cool! You can do that?” Oliver’s youngest male cousin asked. He was about six years old. “Can I be a girl, then?”

“Do you want to be a girl?” Luce asked the boy. The adults did not seem sure of what to do, and Oliver looked like he was trying to decide whether he should be happy or mortified by what his cousin was saying.

“If that’s something people can do, then I can try it out one day and see if I like it!”

The same man who scolded Jack for swearing turned to the child. “Don’t be silly, Jason, that’s not how it works!”

“But if Olivia can be a boy, then I can be a girl!”

“It’s Oliver.” Sam corrected Jason, and glanced worriedly towards his brother.

Jason nodded to Sam and changed his answer accordingly. “If Oliver can be a boy, then I can be a girl! And you can call me Adelaide!”

“Where did that come from?” the man asked in an angry tone. “Stop this silliness right now!”

Mr Viñas once again came to the aid of his son. “This is not silliness, Juan, at least not in Oliver’s case.”

“I’m a trans guy.” Oliver somehow managed to speak, though his voice was weak. “This means that I’m not happy being a… a girl.” He shivered as he said the last word, and put his arms over his chest. “I’m sure I’m not one, and it hurts when people call me by my old name and use female pronouns.”

“But why wait until now to tell us this?” the woman in the black dress asked. “If you were not happy as a girl, you would’ve known about it for a while, right?”

“Not really. I knew I wasn’t happy, but I didn’t realise why until I learned that trans people exist. I thought I just didn’t like girly stuff and that was fine, but it’s not only about the stuff I like and don’t like. I know I’m a guy. It’s not a phase or a fad or anything like that. That’s how I feel. And it would mean a lot to me if you could call me Oliver from now on.”

The confused expressions on the adults softened. Oliver looked really anxious and scared, and this probably helped them see the truth in his words. The argumentative uncle was the first to speak. “I’m sorry, Oliver.” He put a special emphasis on the name, though it was hard to tell if this was because he was making sure he got it right, or because he was mocking his nephew. “This is something completely new to me. I never thought my niece could become my nephew. It’s something I’ll have to get used to.”

“Everyone thought you were a lesbian like me,” one of Oliver’s aunts said. She was sitting next to her partner on the couch. Both women looked very feminine, the opposite of the lesbian stereotype I was used to. “Not that all tomboys are lesbians, or that every lesbian has to be a tomboy, but…”

Her partner completed her thoughts. “I guess we figured there was something queer about you, but we didn’t know enough to guess what.”

“I don’t like girls that way.” Oliver made a slightly disgusted face, but he tried to disguise it by looking in my direction. “Everybody at school used to think I was a lesbian too, even though I said lots of times that I knew I wasn’t. I’m only attracted to guys, and I have a wonderful boyfriend who stuck with me through everything and accepts me for who I am.”

Oliver pulled me towards him and hugged me around my waist. I was at a loss of what to do, so I hugged him back, even though I felt embarrassed by being put in the spotlight like this. This was the secret signal my boyfriend’s family was waiting to bombard us with questions about our relationship. They seemed to forget Oliver’s coming out (and they got his name and pronouns wrong a few times), focusing instead on finding out how we met, what we did together, and how much we loved each other. I was mortified to realise that my boyfriend’s family was as comfortable talking openly about sex as he was, and so we even had our intimacy scrutinised. Oliver did not mind it and answered naturally to their curiosity. He explained about his body dysphoria and how it meant he wasn’t as comfortable with sex as he used to be, as well as how it made him not want to look at mirrors. Little by little, his aunts, uncles, and cousins started to ask more about things relating to his identity and what was his life like. Luce and Charlie entered the conversation when they asked about Oliver’s plan for transition. The family freaked out when Oliver mentioned he would like to have chest surgery. They saw the operation as a cosmetic procedure, as Oliver putting himself at risk (not to mention under a lot of pain) for an aesthetic ideal. It took many rounds of explanations to make them understand that Oliver’s life would be much more miserable if he did not have the surgery. It was far from a cosmetic procedure; much of Oliver’s mental well-being depended on having the flat chest he dreamed of.

After so much talk (it took so long that Sam went with the younger children to play in his room because the grown-up business got too boring for him), only two people had not yet spoken: Oliver’s paternal grandparents, the ones who had come from Spain to be with him on this special day. They rarely took their eyes away from Oliver while he spoke about his experiences as a trans guy, but their faces didn’t show any particular emotion. It was only when Oliver’s aunts and uncles engaged him in a wave of tearful hugs (just like Sam said would happen), that they got up and approached their grandson. Oliver became nervous under their gaze.

“Abuelita…”

She approached him first and finally cracked a smile. “I don’t know if I understand everything you said, but as long as you’re happy, that is all that matters to me.”

“Gracias, Abuelita! I’m happy now, happier than I’ve ever been!” They hugged, and Oliver’s eyes filled with tears. Others were getting emotional too, family members as well as Henry, Luce, and Ariadne.

“I love you, child. It doesn’t matter what your name is or if you’re my granddaughter or grandson.”

They hugged for a long time, until Oliver’s grandfather decided to ask for some attention too. Oliver’s coming out could not have been better. He had the unconditional love and acceptance of his family, and he was finally free to be himself among them. I wanted to be happy for him. I wanted to be glad that he was lucky, that his birthday party turned out to be a good day after all the earlier struggle. I wanted to celebrate with him the fact that he had an amazing family who would stand by him no matter what.

But all I managed was to run to the back garden before the tears and the pain became too much for me. I did not want to spoil Oliver’s happiness with the flashbacks of what my own family did to me, or how no amount of acceptance would change the fact that my parents would rather see me dead than let me be my own self.