Puberty

I decided that life was being deliberately cruel the day that all of the designer clothes I had scrimped to afford  failed to fit me, not going past my shoulders or hugging the air where my hips and chest should have been. Buying my heels and jackets from drag queen websites left me feeling crestfallen, and when forgetting my P.E kit I had to wear a boys one, the teacher repeating incredulously “you’re a shoe size 9!?” did nothing for me either. That happened frequently; awkward stares that everyone else knew something was different, it wasn’t so obvious so that I could pinpoint it, it started off as sniggers but grew to something much worse.

When in the changing rooms people were no longer teasing, they were staring at my body silently, coldly, and questioningly because they didn’t know what I was. What hurt the most was that I didn’t know what I was either. I got changed in the toilet cubicles when the body hair started to grow, and stopped participating in sports altogether when I grew scared my rugby tackle would hurt someone. Call it testosterone, or call it the final straw, I got into a lot of fights in that lesson. ‘Dyke’ was thrown around a lot, and I would fight that label tooth and nail, because I was certain that I wasn’t a lesbian, it was just a cruel twist of puberty that was making me look like one.

My teachers did nothing, they would look at me up and down then silently agree with the class, their bleach blonde ponytails bobbing and lip glossed mouth pouting in disapproval. I didn’t want to watch the other girls get changed. Quite the opposite, actually. Everybody was so smooth; nice skin, glossy hair, petite. I looked rugged, with a face pock marked from acne and muscle definition on my arms and thighs. I resembled all of the boys in the other changing room, but if I was 3 years older. I was more masculine than most of them already. As soon as mixed gender lessons started the similarities between me and the boys in the way that I moved around the hall were made more difficult to ignore, and the new teacher would make a sweeping addresses of ‘lads’, ‘boys’, ‘gents’ and ‘guys’, always accidentally including me.

While the girls would laugh at me, the boys laughed with me, and I learned very quickly that beating people to the punch line that is my body, it would soften the blow that I was a freak. Banter was something I took to well though I suppose, whatever that means. That P.E group would chat to me occasionally, they took a shine to me in some way; they thought I was funny, and would mention their girlfriends a lot, and then look at me expectantly. They had obviously figured out something about me which I wouldn’t for at least three more years, but at the time I assumed that I had been friend zoned, and I grew incredibly upset about it. The irony now of course is that I detest it when male friends hit on me...