THE THINGS YOU CAN DO.
By Nick Olson
The shaved legs can be hidden as needed, same with polish-painted toenails. Makeup can be skipped, and masc clothes can be worn to complete the illusion. You can remind yourself that they’re not ready, or maybe you’re not, or maybe both. You can get home and toss off the dirty work clothes, dress how you’d like to be seen, spread the e.l.f. srsly satin on lips and wing your eyes and put on something glam, Lou Reed or Marc Bolan or Brian Eno. Something with feeling. You can shake your hair out, put on your favorite black skirt, live this music, turn it up till you can’t hear yourself think. You can imagine all the ways you’ll give notice to your transphobic boss, put in another few applications, cross fingers that something comes through soon, ‘cause you might be a late starter, but you’ve started, and there is no stopping this now, no turning back.
You can remember all the signs, telling your mom while stopped at a red that even though you’re a boy, a lot of the time you feel more like a girl. The Elton John you consumed as a kid, the Queen, Freddie Mercury like a clarion call for authenticity and freedom, gender expression like a fire, and the way you’d danced then, same as now, and you can remember the first time you dressed femme, and the realization that this could be your everyday. The blind excitement, the open joy.
You can open up the old word docs, trace your mental state through the stories you used to tell, pre-transition, tragedy by default, and not seeing then the transparency of it, only the pain, and at the end of it the aperture always determines the picture.
But the stories can change. The shaved legs can be shown, and you can put on that pretty red dress that’s just been sitting in a box, nails painted to match, to complete the look. You can accept that some of them won’t be ready, that it’s not your responsibility to help them be ready. You can toss out the old masc clothes, and you can be ready even if they’re not. You can, finally, be okay.
Nick Olson (he/they) is the author of Here's Waldo and Editor-in-Chief of (mac)ro(mic). Originally from Chicagoland, he now lives in North Carolina. He’s been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart, Fiction Southeast, and other fine places. Find him online at nickolsonbooks.com or on Twitter @nickolsonbooks.