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Anya’s head came up to my shoulder, settling her chin on top of the uniform I never quite seemed to take off, sure I’d take it off to wash it every other day but I found it harder and harder to look at myself in the mirror each day, looking at myself grow into a man, I should be proud. I had the physique and appearance that most men would live and die for, or so I"ve been told, but to get out of my own skin was the only thing I’ve ever wanted. It had started as a teenager, when I became acutely aware that I was growing into a man, and therefore, would be seen as one, this scared me for a reason I hadn’t quite decoded.
Each feminine trait I may have been allowed while young was promptly stomped out as I got old enough to have two digits in my age. My father himself, a man with values so old you’d figure he went back in time to learn from the most misogynistic men in history, made a list of traits men should have, only to drill them into me each day. ‘Boys do not cry, they are strong, they are leaders, they provide and protect, they do not feel like women, they are not women’. Most of them hadn’t stuck, I cried, I often failed to provide and protect, I felt like a woman, I was a woman. As steady as this realisation hit me, the shame with it hit with an immediate fury.
Shame is and was a terrible, beautiful thing, something that gave and wired any energy out of me. A strange concept and feeling to be sure, but not one I cared that much about when I was with others, but in the dark, I let it pool over me like a black viscous slime and consume me whole. But then, with Anya’s head on my shoulder and her hand on mine, I felt infinite in the glow of the night screen ahead of us, but no good things last forever. Shame is parasitic, it worms into us all and buries itself into our deepest dreams and desires and eat away until there is nothing left, much like most of the things I find beauty in, my favourite people reflect this in a way I can’t describe as anything other than irony. Sometimes, I will let the wrong worm wriggle through my veins and set itself down on my heart, invading my tangled gut. And I begin to hate myself in a way I imagine feels like finding God in the mist of a fire and hating him so fervently for cursing you with the bubbling blisters on your hand, hating him for not making you fire proof will not stop the pain, but it will absolve you of the responsibility of walking into the fire.
I know nobody will save me, but I want to be saved. Standing at the edge of a ledge with my feet in the cement, I wished I could jump like the way a penguin wishes to fly. A wish not supported by their anatomy.
”I’m not supposed to say this you know but fuck it. Out of all of the crew, even Jimmy, I think you’re my favourite.” Anya turned her head as I spoke, I could hear a breathy chuckle escape her mouth as she leaned her head forward into my shoulder slightly, closing her eyes and taking a a deep breath. Sometimes I forgot that I was meant to be her captain, her leader, instead of her friend. Maybe it was out of some buried familial affection that only seemed to come out when I was with her or something else entirely, Anya’s presence seemed to cheer me up little by little.
”As long I’m fit to fly in your eyes.” I liked that, I liked that a lot, it was a nice little phrase, one I hadn’t heard from anyone else before, it fit quite well into our situation, currently soaring through space in a rickety old freighter, sure it was fit to fly, didn’t mean it was very good at it. I figured that maybe it was a phrase where Anya came from, which I’d learned from nights like this, was the town of Az-Zawayda in Palestine. That fascinated me, like most things about her did, I had never found myself so interested in another person before.
I snapped back into our conversation after a small moment of thinking, smiling at Anya and tilting my head to the side as I opened my mouth to speak, “oh yeah, I’m definitely stealing that. I’ll be quoting you back to yourself the next psych eval, you won’t even know when I’m gonna do it, maybe I’ll do it twice, trice or quadruple. Maybe I won’t say it at all or maybe I’ll save it for the end.” Anya chuckled again at that, it was nice that my awkward attempts at humour tickled at least someone in my crew. If I had it my way, Anya would be my co-captain and Jimmy would get some actual experience by doing nurse work instead of occasionally touching a joy stick or a steering wheel to move the ship a few inches to the side. Co-pilot work was too easy for him and he didn’t even want to do that, it was almost as if he didn’t want to be challenged, like he didn’t want work to be rewarding and just wanted to complain about the easiest job in the world.
”Well you shouldn’t have told me then, I’ll have to put down that you’re clinically insane and find yourself sexually attracted to Polle.” I blinked a couple times at that before opening my mouth in faux surprise and shock, putting a hand on my forehead and feigning sadness with lachrymal and melancholy attributes, I feigned a sob in the back of my throat like a bratty child, “you can’t do that, I’ll tell my dad on you and he’ll beat up your dad.”
That was when I got a burst of laughter out of Anya, which was my intention the whole time, in times like these, Anya made me feel almost okay in my own skin, in my anatomy, yet I wished I could be like her, or be her in a way, “god damn it.. oh my god, that one really got me. maybe I’m just tired but that was your best tacky joke yet.” Faux shock again as I pulled in a gasp and clapped my hand on my chest, looking down and pulling my face into an artificial frown. Yet she just chuckled again and flicked the bridge of my nose, to which I opened my mouth once again and gasped, pushing her head off my shoulder and down to the couch with a ‘doosh’. And to that, she punched the side of my head with a probably-not-real fury that made me feel dizzy for a moment.
”Wowwwww!” My voice was raised, the sting attacking my head, this was an act of abasement for me but I remained waggish all the while, it was fun for me at least, hanging out with Anya was a fun I hadn’t experienced with any of my other friends, well, male friends, “I thought nurses were supposed to love and nurture people, I guess some context gets lost when the metaphors don’t reach you though, huh?” I spoke in a mocking tone, sticking my head forward as I spoke and my tongue, which promptly resulted in being flicked on my tongue by a grinning Anya.
”You’re the exception in my hipocratic oath, right next to using euthanasia and preforming abortions it says ‘you can also hit, maim and kill Curly whenever you want.’” For a moment I thought, then realised how stupid that was, it definitely did not say that, I knew that for a fact, but Anya’s smirk told me all I need to know, you would have thought she’d put a finger gun against her chin with how much of a teenage fuckboy she looked like at that moment, “wait kill? who’s flying this ship if I’m dead?” I looked her up and down as I spoke in an incredulous tone, to which she put a hand over her mouth to stop her laughing while I kissed my teeth playfully and rolled my eyes.
”Swansea, probably. We all know that Jimmy would probably try to hump the posters on the walls sooner than fly this ship.” In that moment, I felt a sliver of fear at the thought of Swansea piloting the ship, but also thought of a good joke, oh how opposites attract, “old man pilots spaceship drunk, no survivors and a dui.” Another burst of laughter punched it’s way out of the nurse’s gut at that as she fell back onto the couch, chin leaving my shoulder for the first time in fifteen minutes.
”Ohhh my goddd, that’s terrible, that’s..” Halfway in between speaking and lifting her head back up, Anya bursted back into laughter, cutting off her own sentence and throwing her head back and cackling out, having to take the deepest gasps I’ve ever heard in my life to balance herself, “terrible, we’re gonna have to put you downnnnn.”
As her cackling continued, mine started up at her comment, Anya often compared me to a dog when we were alone and joking at nights like this, mocking me by calling me ‘good boy’ or ruffling my hair or telling me to preform tricks, though she didn’t do this in a mean-spirited or genuinely infantilising way like most would, “no please, I have so much to live for like.. likeeee.. shit I got nothing.” I spoke in a artificial desperate tone at first, putting my hands together to commit to the bit before faking a drop in my face at the last sentence for some good old deadpan humour that I knew Anya adored. And as planned, it only increased her laughter as our conversation fizzled away into chuckles and slapping each other’s arms and legs while we both simultaneously tried to catch our breaths.
As the silence seeped in like blood to cloth, my joy almost instantaneously absquatulated, disappearing down the depths of the grief only due to one silly mistake that could never be undone, just one chromosome being off in my conception. I was more sure of it, like I had known it for eternity, that my life would feel full if I were born a woman, I wouldn’t have to live the life I was, trapped in a body and a place I had no business being in other than through the fault of my parents. I wasn’t a good leader, I wasn’t even a good friend at times, but I tried, I really tried to keep everyone happy, the bigger picture mattered more than one person, mattered more than myself, more people would stay happy if I just stayed a man, so I did. Yet the guilt I felt from pushing a woman that could have been down was absorbefacient in partner with my shame.
I had contemplated telling Jimmy once, when I had first found out, I had planned a conversation, written it down and all, what I’d say, what he’d say, I knew him well enough to predict what he’d say to me with dart-like precision. But betting on a horse with a broken leg didn’t do me any good given the moment I’d brung up my first topic, Jimmy had laughed in my face and called me a dumbass and a sissy, I had cried when I went home that night. As pathetic as it was, I wanted Jimmy to know so very bad, wanted him to see me as I was. Then again, Jimmy hardly saw himself as he was, after all, leading the horse to water and making it drink are two things that do not apply to Jimmy, he is much too stupid to follow me to water.
The impulse, once again came over me to tell someone, have someone know who I was and harbour my secret. Maybe it was a selfish thing to do but more times than not nowadays I found my usually natural kindness was becoming more and more out of force than habit. Maybe I was a little selfish, most likely I was insanely selfish but I needed someone to know who I am, much more than I needed them to accept it, but again, too scared to come out with the right words, as always, I tiptoed around it, “did you know there was a German clinic that preformed early sexual reassignment surgeries, including an ovary and uterus transplant, and were performed in the early 20th century but was later destroyed in the Third Reich?” I blurted out, words spilling out one after the other as if I couldn’t stop them coming out, I watched for Anya’s expression, waiting for it to change.
And sure enough it did but she didn’t speak straight away, her eyes narrowed pensively for a moment as she hoisted herself up fully and put a hand on her chin, thinking for a moment before sucking a breath in and opening her mouth, “Hmm, so is this conversation about the history of surgery or transgender history now? Doesn’t matter, I’ll tell you facts about both. Okay so first, since humans first learned how to make and handle tools, they have employed their talents to develop surgical techniques, each time more sophisticated than the last; however, until the Industrial Revolution, surgeons were incapable of overcoming the three principal obstacles which had plagued the medical profession from its infancy—bleeding, pain and infection. And for transgender history, well Malaysian transgender history but tomato tamato, Mak nyah is a Malay slang term for trans women in Malaysia. It arose in the late 1980s in order to distinguish trans women from other minorities and separate them from gay or trans men, trans men are also referred to as Pak nyah and transgender people as a whole are Mak-pak nyah.” God did I make the best decision of my life befriending the nurse on my ship, she was about the only person in this ship who could go straight back at me with this stuff, the fact she knew so much about so many topics made me feel comfortable in a way I never had. Seen, almost.
”Mak nyah? So they just made an entirely new phrase for transgender women separately?” I knew it probably wasn’t like that but hearing her go on and on about some sort of history or rabbit hole had always made me feel better in the vastness of blank space, her voice was soothing, her eyes too, her entire appearance seemed to give me a sense of peace I hadn’t felt in years, “well, not exactly, Mak nyah is formed from the word mak, meaning "mother", and nyah, meaning "transition" or more literally, "to run from". If we were to think of it literally, it would mean ‘mother running’ or ‘running mother’ but it’s not literal so it just means trans woman basically. Oh yes also, Khartini Slamah, a prominent transgender figure in Malaysia, describes how the term arose in the transgender community and I quote: "First, as a desire to differentiate ourselves from gay men, transvestites, cross-dressers, drag queens, and other "sexual minorities" with whom all those who are not heterosexual are automatically lumped, and second, because we also wanted to define ourselves from a vantage point of dignity rather than from the position of derogation in which Malaysian society had located us.” The term is quite broad though, as said by Khartini herself, Ahem, “M]ak Nyahs define themselves in various ways along the continuums of gender and sexuality: as men who look like women and are soft and feminine, as the third gender, as men who dress up as women, as men who like to do women"s work, et cetera.” Jesus, I need to catch my breath.”
As she stopped speaking, I was hit with the horrifying realisation that if I wanted her to know, I would actually have to tell Anya I was a woman instead of just waiting for her to click on to my abnormalities because of topics I talk about, “speaking of transgender history, how would one typically go about.. uhm, what’s the phrase? Uh, coming out?” I knew the phrase like it was tattooed on my forehead but feigning not knowing what it was wasn’t the best move either way, it made me seem more ignorant than transgender myself, that was until Anya spoke again, “why, you need to come out?” her question was spoken in that strikingly genuine tone of voice that I only heard her speak in a few times, I wasn’t sure if this was an actual genuine question though, I had been made fun of before because of these trick questions and I was nothing if not bitter and sore.
”Well..” I took a breath in, I wasn’t quite sure how to say it, no matter how hard I tried, some part of me didn’t want to say it out-loud, to admit it to someone other than myself, to be honest and tilt someone’s perfect view of me, knowing about something didn’t mean you liked something, or even accepted it, it just meant you knew about it, staring into Anya’s face, I spoke, “all my life, I’ve needed something, something that I couldn’t grasp or something that I could, but it always turned out wrong. Like something was wrong with me instead of my ambitions, my job, my family or the people I speak to and are friends with, maybe this is it? Maybe I really am just meant to be someone else, like maybe the reason I feel like I don’t belong is because I’m playing a person that doesn’t exist.” I could feel my voice breaking under everything, I wasn’t sad, I didn’t know why I felt like I was going to cry, it bubbled in the back of my throat like an infection that I couldn’t shake away. Yet her face didn’t change, her eyes didn’t burst with hatred, she didn’t pull the corners of her mouth back in a disgusted scowl, she just looked at me, and for once, saw me as I truly was.
A chuckle escaped from her lips, not malicious, not mocking or teasing, more affectionate than anything else, for once, all of my walls crumbled around me and I was myself for the first time in such a long time ago, before the years before I was supposed to be a man, “you always speak in uncertainty, like you don’t already know. But you do, you know it better than you’ve known anything in your life. Being born something and being something else has happened to millions over the ages, who’s to say you can’t be next? If it is truly you, if being a woman is a part of who you are, who am I to do anything about it? Who is anyone?” Now, in that moment, I was certain of who I was, even though knowing this was something that probably wouldn’t come to fruition for me, mainly out of my own fears and the need to be seen as someone untainted, despite all this, I am myself, a woman trapped in a man’s body, the bird trapped in the cage, the lover trapped in the captain’s chair.
With that, I shuffled forward, taking her into my arms, hands shaking and eyes threatening to water, a hand through her hair and her heart beating with mine, her own fingers coming up my back with a deferential touch as I felt her head nestle into my shoulder once again, I felt whole with her in my arms, “you’re by far the greatest friend of my life, Anya, and a damn good nurse at that. When we get back, I’m making damn well sure you’re getting into those nursing schools if I have to beat my way in.”
”I’ll hold you to that when the time comes then, captain.” Her voice was amused and soft, her touch reflecting the same.
Above all else, Anya was the great friend of my life.