July afternoon at summer camp. Somewhere between 1990 and 92, maybe. Who actually remembers when things happen? It’s hot and humid, and we were told to go outside to the field and just be outside. There was no plan, no sport, and no sport equipment. Just go be outside in the heat for a while and build some character — and not in a D&D kind of way.
We had air conditioning inside. We had arcade games and arts and crafts inside. I liked inside, but the counselors, for some reason, wanted us outside. In the sun. With no sunscreen. The counselors were probably fucking.
Some sport game started up because kids are ingenious and they find ways to make games. Games that require speed, and cunning, and standing five inches taller than everyone else. I didn’t like sports. Most of the girls didn’t either, but I couldn’t sit with the girls. I wanted to. I wanted to know what they talked about. To gossip about Jonathan Taylor Thomas. To have a bestie sit behind me braiding my hair. To paint my nails the same color as my Lisa Frank sticker book. But that’s creepy for a boy, and I was scared of them. Some of them picked on me and called me names. Mean girls bullied me in summer camp.
So I hung out with some bad boys instead. I didn’t fit in except none of us wanted to play sports. These kids were trouble. Like my-parents-warned-me-away-from-them trouble. Like skipping-sports-and-hanging-out-by-the-chain-link-fence-with-one-leg-bent-back-leaning-against-the-chain-link-fence-while-trading-stories-about-that-one-time-they-tried-a-cigarette-and-looking-really-cool-in-front-of-that-chain-link-fence kind of trouble. You know.
One of those boys told a story — a very matter-of-fact story, like this was an everyday-occurrence story, a NO-BIG-DEAL story — about being bitten by a werewolf. And then transforming into a werewolf.
No one actually believed him, but we were bored, so to kill an hour we all very much believed him. We asked questions. We were intrigued. I wanted to know: Could he turn us into werewolves?
Yes, he could. And he wouldn’t need to bite us. (No one would have been into that game.) Instead, he had learned a ritual involving a circle and whatever weeds happened to be in the field. The small, white bulbous ones that wilt into dirty snow. Sure, whatever. I stood in the circle as they pranced around, threw flowers, and chanted fake Latin at me. And laughed at me, because how stupid was I to believe any of this. They really sold it, too. And when those bad boys finished, I was warned that at the first full moon I would transform into a beastly werewolf!
And then those bad kids who my parents warned me against ditched me at the chain link fence, weeds sticking to my Umbro shorts, because I guess the joke was over. I definitely believed I would transform into a werewolf. Ha!
Except I really, really wanted that to happen. Every night for a week I checked the moon, waiting for it to be full, hoping that maybe, despite the reality of logic, the ritual was real. Like how kids in movies fall ass-backwards into resurrecting the dead or summoning demons, except this time I would become a werewolf. I prayed for werewolf! I lay in bed imagining. What if I became something else?
I didn’t much care for werewolves. Of all the transformations to fantasize about, werewolves were the least interesting to me. But I was desperate, and I would take anything to get me out of this dreadful body.
I could fill my head with dreams of transformation for hours. I slept inordinate hours when I could, often awake in bed because I preferred to control my dreams, enjoy my dreams, remember my dreams than let some arbitrary vision flitter across my unconscious mind.
Vampires were popular. Once bit, I would undergo a painful conversion to an immortal beauty. With a coffin for a crysalis, my body stretched, my muscles popped, my hair, nails, and fangs extended, and my breasts — my breasts? — perfectly formed, ripped through my male chest. I imagined all of this as excruciatingly painful. It me, just writhing in agony. Sweating. Heart racing. Crushed in an iron maiden of searing hopes. The more the fantasy hurt, the more it existed in my reality. And when I could not handle any more, not one sharp prick more, the pain stopped, and I emerged from the coffin enshrined a gorgeous, eternal vampire lady, existing inside the perfect body forever.
I should also point out I really enjoy going to the dentist.
Other fantasies included alien abduction followed by genetic modification experiments, mad scientist abduction followed by genetic modification experiments, and just fucking waking up a girl one day. Can I get a Ranma what-what?
So many stories in my head, all about forced transformation. Because I, a normal boy who definitely did not need to see a therapist (with which my mother often threatened me), would never choose to transform my body. But damn, if I didn’t have a choice in the matter? Sign me up as the victim of that criminal assault, please!
Transformative fantasies are not unusual for children, even the non-trans ones. Puberty is hard. I’m not saying anyone who enjoys vampires, werewolves, or Sailor Moon is trans — though in my head-canon you are — but the transgender transformative fantasy seems — and I say this with absolutely no clinical research — unique.
Reading April Daniels’ book, Dreadnought, about a transgender teenager who is transformed into a superhero (and also transitions gender in the process), pushed me to remember and analyze my own transformative fantasies and what I was trying to figure out from them, oh, 30 years ago.
Between my experiences, Daniels’ writing, and various hearsay on the Internet, I hereby proclaim three commonalities of transgender transformative fantasies:
- The transformation must be against the will.
Conscious denial of wanting to be something else while secretly wanting it (and secretly knowing you want it). Also, the transformation cannot be reversed, despite protests, thus absolving any guilt or blame when coming out in the new body. - The transformation must be quick.
Within 24 hours or possibly being unconscious throughout the change and awaking to a new body. Time means watching the change, seeing the in-between, and failure to disassociate the old and new bodies. - The transformation must be ideal.
It’s a fantasy; why would you want to become a mediocre version of yourself? Whether ideal is an air-brushed Playboy bunny, an ample goddess, or a humanoid cat, you will be flawless, perfect, and non-dysphoric.
I was encumbered by transformative fantasies well through my twenties. A damn adult still wishing on a full moon I would wake up a giant dog. But one with breasts. For the love of god, I don’t want to be a dog, but at least give me the breasts!
In my thirties, the fantasies disappeared. I don’t remember being at all preoccupied with them anymore. I could fall asleep. I could get out of bed at a normal hour. I could focus on other people. What happened? Did I grow up? Did my brain finish developing? No, I don’t think so. I still see myself as a child, very much unable to grow up in this pre-transitioned body (another topic).
I believe two events in my thirties destroyed the fantasies:
- Although I grew up knowing about (apologies) “transvestites”, it was in my thirties that transgender people received more positive visibility, and I learned of medically transitioning. I had toyed with cross-dressing, but to know there were pills and surgeries that would take me from a “before” to an “after” — and some of those “afters” were glorious.
- After losing too much hair, I shaved my head. Maybe I could pull off being one of those guys. I could not. I have never hated my reflection more than when I was completely bald. I felt nauseated to look at myself. I did not leave the house for weeks. To save myself from inevitable depression, I got hair transplants. My first cosmetic surgery, obsessively watching the scabs fall out, then the peach fuzz growing thicker each month, finally becoming a brand new hairline. I had more control over my body than genetics. I could be whoever I wanted.
My fantasies were shattered because I could actually have what I wanted, in reality, but not the way I always fantasized. It wouldn’t be someone else’s decision anymore. It would be my choice. It had to be my choice. And it wouldn’t be a fast process. Hormones take years. Surgeries even longer. And the results could be great, amazing even, but they’d never be perfect.
Maybe I would be too old and aged by the time the transformation was done. Maybe I wouldn’t even notice the difference watching the changes every day. Suddenly, this was not a hazy dream lingering on the periphery of my vision, but an existential question: Did I want to be a woman? Because I could. I could be a woman.
The jig was up, and dysphoria came out fighting, no longer lurking in the dark, no longer afraid to be seen or named. And me without my fantasies to hide in, covered, like a coffin.
I required another decade, into my forties, much older but wiser, to finally answer, howling at the moon, “Yes. I always was a woman.”
