26 THENEWYORKER,AUGUST19, 2019
a new name could shepherd me into a
new existence; another part ridiculed
myself for being so naïve.
When I introduced myself to people,
I tried to swallow my words. If some-
one asked my name, I pretended that
I couldn’t hear them. If they asked again,
I said whatever came to mind first. I’d
tell one person I was Cyrus, then turn
to another and say I was Grace. I said
“Grace” in a higher pitch.
I was considerate, charm-
ing—whatever would make
the people around me com-
fortable. Cyrus was quiet.
Sometimes he went hours
without speaking at all.
I
n late November, it was
still warm enough to sit
outside on the balcony at
night. I wore shorts, no
shirt, put my legs up on the railing. If
I didn’t look down, I could summon
the sensation of flatness where my chest
was. If I couldn’t ignore my breasts, I
pushed the extra flesh toward the cen-
ter of my torso, or to the sides, or over
my ribs. I pretended it was butter that
I was spreading thin.
Music drifted up the hillside from
parties in other people’s back yards. I
slept with the door to the porch open
at night, so I could hear the sounds
filling the neighborhood. It calmed me
down to feel like the Earth was one big
room; it kept me from drowning in my
panic. For a long time, I’d pushed the
panic down by drinking or by refusing
to be alone or by sprinting until my
lungs and throat burned. Alcohol slowed
my heart and let me sleep until terror
woke me up in the morning, the thump-
ing in my chest that meant I had to
begin another day.
Lately, I’d vowed to try staying in
my body instead of seeking ways to
escape it. Counting my breaths, my
steps, my body parts. Scalp, one. Ear,
two. Ear, three. Brow, four. A friend
told me that every time I felt the urge
to slip outside myself I should look for
the color red. Let it fill you up, they said.
Let it hold you down.
As it turned out, red was always there.
Lines of red neon light out my bed-
room window, highways drawn out into
the valleys. Red bougainvillea petals on
Future Street, on Isabel Street, in all
the tight alleys in the neighborhood.
The red frame around the picture hang-
ing above my bed, a distorted photo of
my torso. The blood under my finger-
nails when I picked my head. My red
denim jacket. Red lights on the hori-
zon all the time.
The objects of my desire seemed
smaller and more mundane than ever
before. I fantasized about walking down
the hill in my neighborhood
in a T-shirt, with a flat chest
and nothing binding my
breasts, the wind flowing
between the fabric and my
skin. I fantasized about
sleeping on my stomach,
without breasts between me
and the mattress. I fanta-
sized about driving in a con-
vertible like the teen-age
boys in tank tops I remem-
bered from my childhood.
I started having dreams about walk-
ing behind my childhood self. Some-
times I held Grace’s hand while she led
me around. Her small hand fit perfectly
in mine. Sometimes I lay on my back
while she read to me from a picture
book and stroked my hair. She wobbled
through words, asking me the meaning
of unfamiliar ones. I walked around with
her on my back, her arms gripping my
neck, her legs gripping my waist.
I
n February, I drove up to Oakland
with my two best friends for a con-
sultation for a bilateral mastectomy,
or top surgery. My partner wanted to
come, but I said I needed to go with-
out them. My own feelings about the
surgery were too convoluted—a lust
for something wordless and new. They
told me they understood. Our relation-
ship was open; still, I wondered if it
could withstand the newness I was
looking for.
The night before my appointment,
at a party, I introduced myself to some-
one I’d never met before. “My name’s
Cyrus,” I said, without faltering.
We left the party and walked around
Lake Merritt. We kissed leaning against
a railing, next to a drained-out part of
the lake caked in goose shit. She was the
first person I’d kissed who knew me only
as Cyrus. Without thinking, I told a story
in which someone addressed me as Grace.
As soon as the name left my mouth, I
tensed up as if I’d been caught in a lie,
as if I were one more in a long line of
men travelling to new cities, conning
strangers with false names.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just changed
my name. I’m still getting used to it.”
She nodded like this was normal and
kissed me goodbye.
The next morning, I wrote her a
message: “Hey, it’s Cyrus. Last night
was fun.”
“I thought your name was Tyrex,”
she wrote back.
I borrowed a friend’s car and drove
to the consultation, stopping at the
beach along the way, because that
seemed like the kind of thing I ought
to do, alone, en route to becoming my-
self. I took off my socks and my glasses
and put them inside one of my boots.
I stepped ankle-deep into the frigid
water, my jeans rolled up, my coat still
on, then lay in the sun and tried to con-
centrate on my breasts, scanning for
nostalgia, fear of loss, attachment. What
I felt was desire: I wanted them gone.
Was wanting enough? I needed the sur-
gery, but I was always trying to make
the need disappear. Did getting rid of
my breasts to become more masculine
mean that I was accepting the very con-
ventions of gender I felt trapped by?
The surgeon’s office was in a strip
mall in the suburbs, across the parking
lot from a Starbucks. I sat in the wait-
ing room with a girl who looked four-
teen or fifteen. She was there with her
mother. I told myself not to scrutinize
her gender, not to look for proof that
she had undergone transformation, but
my eyes travelled to the parts of her body
that would reveal the truth—whatever
that meant. The size of her hands, the
width of her neck. This was a gender-
confirmation surgeon, after all. Why
would a fourteen-year-old girl in ballet
flats and lip gloss, the kind of girl I would
have fantasized about as a teen-ager, be
waiting for an appointment?
The consultation was brief, maybe
ten minutes. The doctor, handsome and
charismatic, a chest tattoo peeking over
the top of his shirt collar, had me un-
dress from the waist up. My breasts
were white lumps. They pulled my at-
tention away from everything else.
“Beautiful,” the surgeon said, as
he traced his finger along the under-
side of the left one. “I can already see
