Lower Expectations

Girls

(6 Min Read)

Important context for this story: I was assigned male at birth, then transitioned to ‘female’ when I was 27. Some people know this information, some people don’t. But in order to understand this story, you need to know that I was a boy at the time this took place.

I am twelve. It is my first day at a new school and I am terrified. There is another new student, Jonathan, who is already striking up conversations and making friends. I would like to leave. The teacher tells Jonathan that the newbies should sit together and this feels horribly embarrassing because while it’s helping me, it’s not helping Jonathan. But turns out we get on well, mostly because, as Jonathan points out, my school diary has a picture of a half-naked woman on it that I glued on the night prior. I looked down at my diary, shocked, and explain that it is not a half-naked woman, it is one of my favourite wrestlers. Jonathan says, ‘but she’s in her underwear’ and suddenly I realise she is both one of my favourite wrestlers and a half-naked woman. I have put a picture of a half-naked woman on my school diary. I am mortified. I try to hide it but Jonathan has already called other boys over. I am dizzyingly popular, or at least my diary is, and I don’t like it because she is not to be leered at, she is to be respected. She is an athlete! She is the Women’s Champion! But yes, unfortunately, I am now seeing this picture in an entirely new light and what the hell was I thinking?

My popularity wanes quickly because I do not want to show anyone my diary and Jonathan is much better at talking with the boys than I am, so while we get along and are friends, he’s the one who’s invited to play handball with the other boys in the class instead of me. I step out to lunch, alone. I wander the schoolgrounds, then feel a tug on my polo shirt. I turn to find a young boy. I know this boy, it’s Jimmy, the son of one of my parents’ friends. I didn’t know he went to the school. We talk for a little bit, then he leaves. That night, I tell my parents that I saw Jimmy, that he goes to our school and my parents say Jimmy doesn’t go to that school, he lives much too far away. The subject is dropped. I have to wonder, alone, if I have made someone up.

The next day I approach Jonathan and tell him that it might be nice if he could also secure me an invite to handball. He thinks this is a great idea. It had not occurred to him. I now have a group of something-like-friends and no longer need to make up young children to keep me company.

Some months later, Jonathan and I are invited to hang out with girls from our class at lunch time. Four, real life girls. We are ecstatic. We huddle, foreheads pressed together and decide that things should be different if we are to be hanging around actual girls. We must be cool. We must be… we cannot find any more adjectives for what we must be, we only know it is not what we currently are. He is a golden retriever boy who plays every sport but cannot form a sentence when a human female is within earshot of him. I play no sport, am possibly allergic to the sun, but seem to only be able to talk to girls: We will get through it as a team.

He plays games with the girls and when they tire physically, I am waiting on a picnic rug with tea, scones and stimulating conversation. We talk one another up, Jonathan asking, ‘what interesting things did you and August talk about?’ as he passes the ball and me calling out, ‘Brava, Jonathan!’ Then turning to the girls beside me, ‘Did you see Jonathan? He’s very good at getting the ball in the hoop. Can I refill anyone’s tea?’

A few days in, the girls begin acting strangely. At seemingly random intervals, one begins singing out ‘Ding-a-ling-a-ling!’, only for the others to then pick up the call and continue it. I ask what it means but they won’t tell me. Jonathan asks but they won’t tell him either. We discuss this privately and observe other girls around the school. This does not seem to be a common behaviour but rather something unique to the girls we spend time with. The ding-a-lings last for weeks. There is lots of laughter. Jonathan and I are uncomfortable. We are likely being laughed at.

Finally, the girls relent as I badger them for the answer to their riddle, but they declare that they will only tell me and not Jonathan. I look to Jonathan, who nods, and I walk some distance away, stand in front of these four girls and receive whatever it is they are about to tell me. Whatever grand revelation, whatever ‘girl secrets’ they keep. I am sure I am about to be welcomed into some sort of club, given secret knowledge and power. Instead, they tell me that each time Jonathan scratches or ‘rearranges’ himself, they shout ‘ding-a-ling-a-ling’ and that if he wants to know what it means, then I alone must be the one to tell him. I do not like this. I tell them as such. I give them the twelve-year-olds’ version of ‘I am very disappointed in the four of you’ and walk away, calling Jonathan to me, leaving the basketball courts entirely. He asks where we’re going and I say we are leaving. We are not hanging out with those girls today and, once I tell him what I know, he can decide if we ever do again. He says that if they’re making fun of me, we don’t have to be friends with them and I understand why he immediately thinks it’s about me: I have the weird curly hair, I’m the chubby one, I have the teeth that look like a freeway pile-up. I hide my relief that this is not about me.

Jonathan is crestfallen when I tell him. He feels as though he failed in front of the girls. But he eventually forgives them because he is, down to his core, a golden retriever, and, I will come to learn, eager to please any girl ever.

Jonathan goes on to date one of those four girls. Several months after they break up, I date her. She is my first kiss. She dumps me a few months in via a friend and I never get a reason why.

I am thirteen and am dating a girl named Natalie. She and her friends often hang out at a roller-skating rink near our school, but I don’t live in the area so I don’t go as often as everyone else does. But Jonathan goes a lot because Natalie has two friends and Jonathan has a crush on both of them. One Monday morning at school, Jonathan tells me that over the weekend, he and Natalie kissed. They were playing hide and seek and they both hid in a closet and then, somehow, they were kissing. I think about this and wonder if Natalie will tell me herself. She does not. When I bring it up, she admits that she kissed him, he just kissed her back. I break up with her but am still friends with Jonathan. He goes on to date her and I don’t hate him for it. But Natalie has a modelling show coming up because she’s a model now and she’s supposed to invite someone to sit at the table with her parents but she hasn’t told her parents I broke up with her and that she’s dating Jonathan because they might think she’s a slut so will I please come with her, pretend to be her boyfriend, and meet her parents?

I say no but Jonathan says ‘please’ because he will do anything a girl wants him to do and I suppose I will do anything he wants me to do. So I go and I have to act like I like her and it is surreal. On the drive home, in the back seat, Natalie holds my hand. I don’t know what to do because I want to pull away, but I’m supposed to be acting like her boyfriend so should I not pull away? In the end, I hold her hand.

Her mum drives me home. Natalie wants to come too, but her mum won’t let her because it’s late. So it’s just Natalie’s mum and me in the car and she starts asking me things about Natalie, like how she is in class and if she does all her schoolwork and her homework because she thinks, and I should keep this to myself, that Natalie is a bit of a minimalist when it comes to schoolwork, and I don’t know what that is but I pretend like I do. I must black out because I don’t know what answer I give her. Maybe she realises I don’t know any of this information and simply gives up.

The next day at school, I tell Jonathan that Natalie held my hand in the back of the car and he breaks up with her. It will not be the last time we date the same girl.