Page 53 - The Bridge Vol 17_pgs

VOLume 17

Gender? I Barely Know Her

Meghan Damiano
creative nonfiction

When I was a senior in high school, I cut genderly indecipherable. I greet them, grab their
all my hair off in protest. Okay, not all, but a order, and they pay. At some point during or after
lot. It was this awful, granny-esque pixie cut this exchange, the guy refers to me as “young
with more layers than an onion, and was like, man” and I feel myself physically shrink. I’m really
fluffy on top, like the head of a cockatoo, but I shaken up by his mistaking of my gender, because
digress. Sometimes I felt like a BAMF, proud for the umpteenth time, no one has been able to tell
of my feminist haircut. You don’t need long hair that I am female, and that is more troublesome than
to feel feminine and pretty—ask the celebrity any insult at this point in my life.
whose picture I used as a reference. But in reality, Gender, for me, has become this big glowing
that confidence was rarely ever in sight. Instead, question mark. Ever since I was a little kid, it’s
it made me anxious that I gave the bullies who always been this elephant in the room that reminds
tormented my childhood another excuse to refer me how normal I don’t feel. I never really liked
to me as a “thing” and to make fun of me because Barbies or dolls, or typically rigidly “girly” things.
nobody could tell what I was. It made me a target I hate the color pink, or any bright color, unless it’s
and I was terrified. I still kinda am. in small quantities. I don’t really like makeup or
Picture it: a crummy, cold ice rink snack bar. doing my hair. I have masculine features that come
The walls are blue and the paint is cracking. It’s straight from my dad—a giant nose that I never
dusty and dirty and exudes cheap. It’s just me, grew into (which is, frankly, just rude) and thick,
hiding out in the back crevice like Harry Potter dark eyebrows, that match my equally resilient
(fitting, considering we have the same haircut), leg hair. I am shapeless, like a sheet ghost. I am
doing homework because I’m a senior and it’s a also really aggressive and okay at sports, and all
Saturday. In comes this pair of hockey parents. my friends are guys, lesbians, gender neutral or
Snooty, dressed in name-brand clothes, the guy probably equally as confused as I am.
probably wearing a golf shirt, and the woman From the early schooldays, I was made fun
looking like she’d like to speak to somebody’s of for the qualities that made me feel unfeminine.
manager. They look around for someone to fetch I could usually keep up with the boys, and for
them hot chocolate or whatever—oh hey, that’s my years, I played t-ball and baseball, and hung out
job. I am wearing a blue crewneck sweatshirt with with the boys at recess. I used to be referred to
my favorite band—Modern Baseball—on it, regular as a butch and get egged on to be more aggressive
skinny jeans, my pixie cut, no makeup. Generally, in games so that bullies could laugh at me for

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