CARNAL NATION

At age twenty, it’s definitely weird to be going through puberty—again.

The first time was all wrong. Despite the blissful androgyny of my childhood, which, I imagined, would never end, I developed like a girl turning into a woman. Every milestone was a defeat, quietly devastating—the first bloody spots on my underwear that made me cancel my plans to go swimming, the bra that my friends had to tell me I needed. I was half in denial, half just not paying attention. Before I knew it, I had breasts, curves, and feminine sex appeal. I didn’t know what to do with it all.

With one life to live, I elected to live it honestly, and finally admitted to myself I was a transsexual man.

As for all of the other boys, they got big, sweaty, and hairy, but at the same time more handsome, better defined, more appealing. I watched them with envy wherever they went—on the soccer field, in the classroom goofing off.

I felt it most keenly at my favorite punk club, where the guys in the pit pushed and shoved against each other, oblivious to any homoeroticism. I watched from the sidelines, never venturing into the melee myself. I knew girls who moshed of course, but I didn’t want to go into the pit as a girl, possibly to be treated gently, with condescending chivalry. I wanted what the guys had, though I had no way of putting it into words.

What was I missing?

Puberty is a time when kids are indoctrinated with gender, trained by their parents, teachers, the media, and their peers to become men or women, depending on the sex they were assigned at birth. Boys learn about machismo and sexual aggression, about not caring too much about anything, about not seeming too sensitive or “gay.” They learn to be competitive, funny, and strong.

And girls... well, that’s just the thing: I never figured out what girls were supposed to learn. I had other things on my mind.

All through my initial puberty, I indulged in an elaborate male fantasy life, which took place online, in my dreams, and in my erotic imagination. By the end of my teenage years, I’d became tired of being attracted to gay guys whom I couldn’t have. I was sick of longing for a body unlike mine, of finding no inspiration in my assigned gender. I decided to stop letting my so-called biology get in my way. With one life to live, I elected to live it honestly and finally admitted to myself I was a transsexual man.

On December 30, 2008, I found myself in the injection clinic, waiting for a nurse who kept calling me “Sweetie” to stick me with a needle. The syringe was filled with synthetic testosterone, male hormones cooked up in a lab. The needle had a big gauge. It hurt going in and left a sore spot. With a twinge and a minimum of ceremony, my second puberty had begun.

The first changes were perhaps purely psychological, inspired by the hormone rather than directly caused by it—an increased confidence in myself, a new sense of realness in my skin. Emotional changes followed, prompted by the hormone. I grew moody, aggressive. My adult mind watched in horror as I snapped at my parents like a thirteen year old, using a tone they hadn’t heard from me in years.

Over the next few months, my voice cracked; my body changed its shape; and fuzz appeared on my cheeks, chin, and lip. My sex drive skyrocketed. I had energy I had never imagined and strength that I didn’t quite grasp. My emotional range shifted. Before, my feelings had been predominated by sadness, from mild depression to deep despair, and I was quickly moved to tears. Now my emotional spectrum had shifted to one of anger, with generalized aggression on the low end and violent rage at the zenith. Instead of crying, I was prone to making fists. I didn’t know how to handle it all.

It became clear to me that it was not enough to sit back and let the testosterone do its magic. To be a man, I would first have to be a boy. But how could I manage this as young adult with school, a job, and family obligations to juggle?