24 THENEWYORKER,AUGUST19, 2019
PERSONAL HISTORY
A YEAR WITHOUT A NAME
Was the problem gender—or me?BY CYRUS GRACEDUNHAM
PHOTOGRAPH BY BREA SOUDERS
so were black and turquoise. Her fa-
vorite color—the hardest to find—was
amethyst. She told me that her name
was Venus, and I told her that my name
was Grace.
“That’s my son’s name,” she said.
“I know, it’s a little weird.” Venus dis-
appeared down the beach, and I walked
to a cliff with the goal of sitting still
for an hour. I wanted to keep my eyes
closed, to home in on sensations—
which I rarely did. That afternoon, it
was even harder than usual to focus,
and I wondered if my encounter with
Venus was a sign, if she was a mes-
senger shooting arrows of meaning
into my life, signalling somethingabout the future. I knew it was a stu-
pid thought, more of a wish than any-
thing else.M
y mom had me when she was
forty-two. She tried hard to have
me. On a green piece of paper, my par-
ents made a list of all the names they
might give me. My mom liked Esther,
my dad liked Kay. They agreed on
Grace, which was an idea, not some-
thing you could touch.
As a child learning to write my own
name, I copied my father’s signature,
which starts with the letter “C.” I liked
to draw “G”s walking across the page,
their tongues getting smaller and smaller
until they became “C”s, just like his.
When I was five, I figured out how
to spell the words I held in my mouth.
I wrote them down until they filled up
an entire page: I’m gross I’m gross I’m
gross I’m gross. I’m sick I’m sick I’m sick
I’m sick. I’m a boy I’m a boy I’m a boy I’m
a boy. Then I ripped up the paper and
threw it in the toilet.
Back then, I knew how to stay in
character as a girl. Polite, curious, the
right mix of self-assured and humble.
When puberty hit, I became obsessed
with mirrors. I checked my reflection—
four times, eight times, twelve times—
to make sure that I hadn’t lost control
of my performance.
Twenty years later, my girlhood was
dissolving, with no clear alternative in
place. I felt less embodied than ever,
less able to gather myself into one per-
son. And yet the idea of “transition-
ing”—changing my name, starting hor-
mones, getting surgery—sucked me
into a thought circuit with no end and
no exit.
What did I really want? I wanted
thicker skin and better boundaries. I
wanted bigger hands. I wanted a flat
chest and a new car. I wanted to pull
my shirt over my head by the collar,
the way men in movies did. I wanted
to feel like myself. I wanted to be con-
crete—a thing you could touch.
I hesitated to call this collection of
desires “dysphoria,” that catchall term
for the pain of having a body that
doesn’t align with one’s self-image, how-
ever aspirational that image may be.
My unease was far-reaching and diffi-
cult to explain—even to myself. I felt
like vapor trapped in a container. AT
wo summers ago, I went to a beach
in Northern California that’s fa-
mous for sea glass. I lay in the sun
until the tide touched my shoes, then
crawled around on my knees, comb-
ing for the luminous green pieces. I
didn’t look up until I bumped into an
older woman who was filling a leather
pouch with shards.
“I like the green ones, too,” she said.
“They’re real neon.” She told me they
were from nineteenth-century Vase-
line bottles that glowed if you put
them under black light. She explained
where all the colors came from. Amber
from aromatherapy bottles. White from
milk bottles. Red was very rare, and