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Grade
12

I hail from a long line of Jew monkeys. It comes with the culture, I guess. Inordinate amounts of dark, curly hair. It’s everywhere. My legs, arms, under my nose, my back, between my eyebrows, toes, belly button. Maybe it’s something about being a historically persecuted people—when you’re constantly stuck outside to freeze it’s good to adapt. If only there was some kind of award for the individual best at adapting. But that would be unfair, because there wouldn’t be any competition at all, really. I’m the Queen of all Jew monkeys, and that’s just a fact. You see, when you’re a 12 year old girl with a mustache, grown to be a 19 year old woman with a full (and luscious, may I add) beard, there are are some contests that you just automatically win.

I think I would feel better about it all if I were gender bendy in any way, but I’m not. I like flower crowns, and pink, and fluffy cakes, and dresses that are good for spinning in. I share my emotions freely, and cry more than is probably socially acceptable—not because I’m more sad than everyone else; I just think it’s a good way to process my feelings. My name is Aliyana, which means ‘beautiful girl’, though my parents just thought it sounded pretty. I’d probably be the most feminine person I know, if most people on the street didn’t assume that I was an overly flamboyant gay guy. The people on the street are not at all politically correct, or sensitive to anything, or else they’d assume that I was trans instead, but people on the street always just think anyone who they can’t quite pin down is a gay guy. I don’t know why. It’s funny, when I do encounter the rare young liberal, he can never tell which trans I am. I could really be anything—female-to-male, or male-to-female. But under all the mystery, who’d guess I’m just your average female-to-female, or whatever. It all gives me this weird unspoken bond with the queer community, I think. My extreme Jew monkeyness. They say only queer people can say that word (queer, not Jew monkey), but I think I’m an exception to that rule. If people think I’m a flamboyant gay guy all of the time, and really think I’m trans, but don’t have the vocabulary, doesn’t that make me trans-trans? I am differently gendered from the gender people’s eyes assign me when they first see me. That big, hairy question mark gender. I’m as straight and cis as they come, but my double transness gives me some right to the word queer, I think. I don’t say that much, because I think it comes off different than I mean it. It’s also really rambling and all over the place, but honestly that’s just the way most things I say are.

I’ve never liked going outside much. No. I love going outside. It’s just not really worth it all of the time. I hate the feeling of people staring, or worse, not looking at me at all. Attempts to seem nonchalant hurt more, because they’re less truthful, I think. It’s not even that people are mean, I just know that they are seeing this fake me, or real me, but whichever me they see I’m the other one inside. The last time I went out was this morning, and it was to Whole Foods. I wanted to bake a lemon meringue pie. Just to be clear, I’m a feminist. My own nightmare, I guess. So anyway, I needed two lemons and four eggs. It took me forever to get out of the house. First I couldn’t find my scarf, and then I just sat on the couch for a while staring into space. Sometimes the first step is the hardest to take, but that rule really doesn’t apply to my hairy-ass feet, so I don’t even know why I just said it. I got out eventually, though. It was a fine walk. I passed three people on the sidewalk. One was a nice looking old man, who gave me the flamboyant-gay-guy-I-think-no-wait-what look. Pretty predictable if we’re being honest. Next was a hip yet wholesome looking couple. The woman was wearing a soft blue floral dress, and was clinging on to the man’s arm as he smiled, whispering into her hair.

“Excuse me, miss,” the man said sweetly, as they squeezed past me on the concrete. The woman stopped short, grabbing his hand aggressively, and giving him a scolding look.

“Sorry, sir,” she spoke, as if she were in on my secret. The man gave me an apologetic look, not for himself, but for his girlfriend who had obviously misgendered me. Good old male-to-female me. That’s unusual. A couple, each so obviously assuming I’m a different kind of trans. I bet they both felt really good after that interaction, like they had helped to make my day a little brighter. I’m glad.

Once in Whole Foods, I didn’t look around. If I don’t head straight to the lemons, I get stuck at the razors. It’s weird that Whole Foods sells razors, but they do, and I always get stuck at them. I like the purple dove ones. I always start thinking about the razors by thinking about how I shouldn’t think about them, and then I magically just end up in aisle 4 instead of 7. I don’t know how, but it always happens, and today was no exception. I don’t get stuck in aisle 4 because I want one. Sometimes it’s nice to make believe that you could be perfect if you did this or that, but seeing those razors makes me think of how making yourself perfect is just cutting yourself up in disguise. And now I’m home, and I have my eggs and lemons, and everything else. I am making a pie. I didn’t buy a razor. I never buy a razor. I’d much rather stick to cutting lemons.

I wish I could be really preachy about not shaving, but I can’t. In order to be properly preachy you have to be perfect at something, I think. I can be preachy about baking pies. I am kind of a goddess at baking pies. What’s really unfair is if I could cut out the year I was twelve, I could be preachy about not shaving. Actually, if I could cut out one twenty minute slot, twenty hours before my Bat Mitzvah, I could be preachy about it. You see, I’ve only shaved once, and it was kind of a disaster.

As I previously mentioned, my facial hair was in full bloom by my preteen years. I thought it was really awesome most of the time, possibly because I am kind of naive, but probably because it was really awesome. I could stroke my mustache when I was thinking, and it made me look really smart and sophisticated. All of the boys in my class had peach fuzz at best, and I could make fun of them for it. They of course made fun of me more, but I didn’t realize this until much after the fact, due to my aforementioned naivety. I didn’t have much of a formal gender identity—a kid is a kid. The whole “becoming a woman” thing is what really messed me up, I think. For twelve months of religious school and private hebrew tutoring, it felt like all anyone could talk about was me becoming a woman. Don’t get me wrong, I was excited. I was just a little confused. I didn’t feel like I was becoming much at all. Yes, I was learning how to read hebrew and how to chant blessings, but learning and becoming are not the same. I thought that then, and I think it now.

I can still remember this one conversation that I had with my best friend, Riley, a few weeks before the big day. After middle school, Riley and I kind of drifted apart. Riley got really into running cross country, and I began to focus on basically anything that didn’t involve sports. We made new, different friends. Every time I see her now, she says “Wow, you look soo beautiful!” in a way that just means she feels uncomfortable. We grew up together, though, and we were practically sisters when I was 12. Anyway, back to that conversation. It was lunch, and a Wednesday, and she was eating a tuna fish sandwich. I remember this, because whenever I think about this moment, which is probably more often than you would expect, I smell tuna. It smells really gross, which is a shame because I really like this memory. She stopped chewing, and looked at me with her head a little tilted to the right. “Do you think you’ll be different after you’re a woman?” she asked. I didn’t know the answer, but I pointed to this girl, Natalie, and said “I’ll be more like her.” Natalie was 13 already, making her the oldest in the class. She always wore pastel colored leggings that reminded me of easter. Her face was a bright, hairless, oval of wonder. Maybe when I was 13 I would be more like that, but it all seemed pretty ridiculous to me. Riley and I giggled, and then I think I started to peel a clementine. Clementines always make me feel like royalty when I peel them, but that’s unrelated.

So I got to the day before the Bat Mitzvah, and everyone was so excited because I’m about to become a woman. I still didn’t know quite what they were talking about, but I wanted my family to be proud of me. I didn’t think about Natalie at the time, but I’m sure she was in my subconscious. I feel like there’s a place in my mind where all of the people I’ve ever known just hang out. They don’t say things to me or anything, but they are a part of every decision, nonetheless. I decided I needed a big change. I needed a way to insure that I would seem like a woman when the time came, no matter if I had actually become one or not.

My mom has always told me that I am beautiful just the way I am. I really believe it, too. I want to make it clear that I didn’t shave my mustache because I was self conscious. People always assume that kind of thing out of women, and it makes me crazy. It’s just that boys grow mustaches when they become men, so I figured it would be kind of funny and relatable if I did the opposite. I wasn’t the most creative child. So I snuck away from my grandparents and cousins, into the bathroom, and took my mom’s purple dove razor straight to my face. I shaved off my face foliage without the slightest hesitation. I thought it would make me feel grown up and womanly. It really just made me feel like a naked bird. A naked bird with a razor burned, stubbly upper lip. The worst part—they loved it! Everyone loved it!

The next day, after the festivities were done, everyone kept telling me how mature I had looked up on the Bimah, reading the Torah. I had become a woman in their eyes, while simultaneously becoming a bald little hatchling in my own. I guess the general public likes their woman infantile, or something. I don’t know. Anyway, I haven’t shaved anything ever since. I’m pretty proud of myself for that. Loss of bragging rights aside, I think it was an important lesson to learn, whatever the lesson was. Becoming is subjective, but learning isn’t. Learning is what's most important, I think.