MONDAY Thomas It''s not every day you leave home for the first time. We''ve been on the highway for half an hour, zipping past fields and farmhouses shrouded in early morning shadows. That thought pops into my head as my eyes trace a lazy river, and I like the way it sounds. I silently try out different ways of pronouncing it, putting the emphasis on the word every, the word day . Wondering if it sounds better with a gentle fall at the end, or if it''s phrased almost like a question. Once I''m sure I have the cadence right, I say it aloud, my voice warm and confident in my throat. Mom takes it in, and I have a moment to feel proud of myself before she bursts into laughter. "Hey!" I protest.
"What''s so funny? It''s true, isn''t it?" "Yes, Bug, it''s true." She only uses that nickname for me when she thinks I''m being extra cute. Like I''m a dreamy nine-year-old again. "So? Why are you laughing?" Because she is. "Oh, it''s just ." She wipes a tear from the corner of her eye. Rude. "That sounds profound, I know, but it''s also so obvious.
Of course it''s not every day you do a specific thing for the first time. That contradiction is built into the idea itself. Damn, you''re not even in college yet and you already sound like a stoned philosophy major." She shakes her head, smiling. I slump down into my seat, a little embarrassed. I hadn''t thought about it that way. "No, you''re right. It sounded cool in my head, is all.
" She reaches over to tousle my hair. "It does sound cool. And, in your defense, you''ve spent a lot of your life explaining obvious concepts to very simple people. You get a pass this time." "Phew." I yawn and lean my head against the window. I cannot wait to stop explaining things to people. Especially people who tell me how important my voice is while not listening to anything I''m saying.
The day I got my early admission acceptance letter to Erickson University-- Erickson , the storied Ivy League institution in New York City, a world away from my tiny Vermont hometown--I knew that my life was going to turn a sharp corner. They have an entire office dedicated to LGBTQ student affairs, and a robust list of resources "for our trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming students." According to the student activities page on the website there are, like, five different queer groups, two trans ones, and they even have a trans-only Greek house. And, best of all, I don''t have to join any of them. Maybe I''ll join an improv troupe. Or the science fiction society. Different groups sometimes organize snowboarding trips or hikes, if I start longing for the familiarity of the outdoors. I''m not sure if I''ll want to be a big-city person forever, but I''m excited for my life to become temporarily unrecognizable in as many ways as possible.
A couple hours later we stop for an early lunch at one of those highway rest stops that have a bunch of different chains and a generic gas station market. Mom gets Quiznos pizza, I get Subway, and we find a crumb-strewn table in the corner of the crowded, echoey dining room. "I cannot wait for you to have your first slice of real pizza," Mom says, blotting the top of hers with a napkin. "This is like a savory piece of shortcake with ketchup and string cheese." I pretend to retch at her description. "It can''t possibly be that bad. It''s Quiznos." She sighs.
"No, I know, you''re right. It''s just, I''ve never gotten over missing New York food. Real bagels, real pizza, real everything. It''s something in the water. You''ll get what I mean after your first week, and then you''ll hate coming home. I promise." She has this faraway look in her eyes, the one that means she''s reliving those first awful months after I was born. My dad had died in a car accident.
As soon as they could after that, Mom and her brother, my uncle Roderick, moved up to an old family house in rural Vermont. Then Uncle Roderick died when I was eleven, so for the last six years it''s been just the two of us. I touch the thin gold chain around my neck, the heart-shaped locket tucked, as always, beneath my shirt. On one side is a tiny picture of my mom, and the dad I never met. Uncle Roderick smiles out at me from the other side, healthy and bright and forever in his twenties. Neither one of us likes the idea of Mom being all alone, even though we both know that I can''t stay with her forever. And yet, her plan is to drive me down, drop me off, and drive right back. She didn''t book a hotel room or ask to crash on a friend''s couch or take advantage of the university''s offer to put her up in a dorm for a night.
It''s her first time in the city since leaving, with newborn me and the word widow hanging leaden over her head. She''s been so supportive of my plan to go to school in New York, to reinvent my place in the world capital of reinvention. She''ll never forget what the city cost her, but she also knows what it gave her. And what it could give me. Now is not the time for moping, though. I want to keep the mood light. "What were your favorite spots in my new neighbor-hood?" I ask, my mouth full of bread. "Do you think anything is still around?" Mom snaps back to the present and puts down her pizza.
"Oh, I never went up there. I was a Brooklyn girl! For a while I dated a guy in Harlem and that was basically a long-distance relationship; you could drive from our house to Burlington in the same amount of time it took me to take the Q to the 4." She shakes her head ruefully. "Besides, the one thing about New York that stays the same is that it''s always changing. How''s this, kiddo? You let me know if you go on a Brooklyn jaunt, and I''ll give you some advice. It might be out of date, but you never know. Deal?" "Deal," I agree, and steal a bite of Mom''s pizza. It''s pretty good.
I don''t know what she''s complaining about. The first chance I got after receiving my acceptance letter, I drove forty-five minutes to the nearest Barnes & Noble and bought myself a pocket-sized map of New York City. I know my phone can tell me how to get anywhere, but I love poring over an actual, paper guide to my new home. I like tracing my finger down Broadway, reading the names of streets in tiny, tucked-away corners, figuring out how I would take the subway to, say, the Met, or the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It''s going to be so different from everything I have ever known. I can''t wait. "By the way," Mom says, once we''re back in the car. "I''ve been meaning to ask you.
Have you figured out what name you''re going to go by?" I sigh. I thought I had picked the simplest name in the world--Thomas, after Uncle Roderick''s middle name. But it turns out that, in fact, I had chosen a weirdly complicated name. It can be Thomas, or Thom, or Tom, or Tommy, and each option presents a subtly different picture of who I might be. At first I introduced myself as Tommy, but soon that made me feel like a little kid from a comic strip. My most recent boyfriend--also my first boyfriend, also my only boyfriend, hopefully not my last boyfriend but who knows--called me Tommy-boy, which was cute at first but by the time we broke up I hated it. My best friend Moira calls me Thom, specifying that she spells it that way in her head because she thinks it''s the most "dignified" option. When I introduced myself at PFLAG trainings, or the Transgender Day of Visibility assemblies where some middle school paid me two hundred dollars to talk about my brave journey, I called myself Tom, because it''s simple.
"I think I''ve settled on Thomas," I tell her. I''ve been wrestling with this question for months. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Another saying that sounds profound but is actually pretty obvious. Mom nods. "It''s a good choice. Not that there are any wrong choices, I like all the available options. Do you want to tell me why you landed on ''Thomas,'' though?" "It''s boring," I explain, and she snorts.
"True. So, why do you, my brilliant, handsome, wise-beyond-his-years son, want to go with boring ?" I grimace. "This is going to sound insanely egotistical, but it comes from a true thing that people have literally said to my face. So you have to promise not to judge me, okay?" Mom smirks. "I bet I can guess. You''re tired of being the most interesting person anyone has ever met, and the reason you feel that way is because people tell you that all the time." "Ex act ly." Look, I don''t identify as the most interesting person that you could meet.
Number one, everyone is interesting in their own way. Number two, I''m really not that interesting. I''m just trans. But all too often people get this glint in their eye upon meeting me, like I''m a mythological creature they''ve only read about in books, and now that unicorn or dragon or whatever is shaking their hand and asking where it can fill its water bottle. I''m not the only trans person in the area. There''s a local PFLAG chapter that gets families from fifty miles around, and a handful of them include a trans family member. A couple kids came out in my high school over the last few years. But in seventh grade, the principal asked if I would share my story for National Coming Out Day, and I said yes because .
I don''t know. Because why not. Then I got asked to present at a different middle school, and then at all the high schools in a hundred-mile radius, and then at a community college. Some places even.