He shut the car door with a grimace, sinking into the familiar grey cloth seat with something of a repressed sigh.
It was another day that had not gone well; hadn’t been easy. But he was here again. He had survived. It was something a skill set he’d learned over many years, this survival thing. Of keeping his head down, and working hard. Taking jobs when he could find them.
This is no different, he told himself.
Except it was.
His face, his name, his voice had changed. The way society treated him, if they figured out the truth, had been the hardest thing to overcome. It hurt less now than it initially did, but there were still stings from time to time that lingered. Comments people made, usually unwittingly, but they stayed with him. He did his best to build up a thicker skin and ignore it, but it was a hard process that took time. Today was one of those days where a comment had dug itself right into his heart, and its barbs took hold, infecting the young man with pain and a quiet rage.
“You’re a pretty boy,” the older woman had said.
“Ah. Thank you,” he murmured.
“No, I mean that,” the woman pressed, tilting her head to one side. “You kinda look like a girl.”
“Mm?” Milo countered. Too afraid to open his mouth to make words; too afraid the bubbling anger always just below the surface would lash out at this insensitive grandma.
“Why do you look like a girl?” the woman asked, before her family was at her side, taking her to a new part of the store. “That man is a woman,” she told them. And they laughed, and threw backward glances at the worker, now with his head hung low, cleaning windows.
I’m not passing well enough to fool an old woman, he thought bitterly. What am I doing wrong?
Milo shook his head to himself, and started the car, starting the drive home. His music blared as loudly as a teenager’s and he grinned sardonically.
Home was a collection of lost boys - a large house on the edge of a field, a social worker’s experiment, always renting rooms to misfits who needed places to stay. In the spring and fall, a couple kind farmers would stop by looking for hands, and the work was hard, but good. Despite Milo’s small build and varied health problems, he often joined a farmer and relished the early sunrises, stacking hay. Feeding chickens. Looking after horses. He couldn’t carry or lift as much as the other men, but what he lacked in strength, he made up for in knowledge, his pursuit in medical sciences often enabling him to lend a hand when an animal fell ill.
As much as he enjoyed this life, there were moments when reminders from the west coast would return and something inside would let loose an empty pang. It was a familiar twinge, something he grew up feeling repeatedly, having moved several times as a kid; missing his old life. This was the same, never fully happy in one home; lived in too many places, found too many lovely things to simply be at peace in any one location. At times it drew him to keep moving, keep finding new places to live, like a gypsy's blood thudded in his heart.
I am forever running away, he scrawled on his wall late one night.
Despite the quiet mornings on farmland, life at the house was often loud, and he felt that he was rather old to be living a “dorm”-like experience; yet considering his only other option was to live out of his car again? Milo stayed, paid his dues, and appreciated the hell out of his bed.
Some of the kids here were drug addicts, some came from abusive families. Some were more like him; they lounged with pubescent sort of awkwardness as their testosterone, or in some cases, estrogen, took hold, shaped their bodies over the course of several months. He didn’t always know all of their names, but he kept tabs on them, made sure they were alright. Every once in a while, one of them would confide in him and he’d make tentative friends. Everyone here was friendly enough - they waved as he came in the door, and he smiled back, speaking as little as he had to, taking a beer from the fridge before going up his room.
Milo was thankful they understood that he needed his privacy.
He took a swig of his beer as he sat down on the edge of his bed, pulling his desk closer to him, looking over the last notes he’d written before going to sleep last night. His refurbished laptop hummed happily as his fingers flitted over the keyboard, picking up where he’d left off.
Behind him, chaos reigned in his room. Textbooks lay open, haphazard on another, bigger desk in the corner. Half finished paintings were stacked against his closet. Discarded clothes lay in small piles. And the walls were a sheer collage of polaroid photos, drawings, watercolor splatters.
Rounds of schizophrenic and PTSD episodes in his youth had left him scarred in more ways than one; the photographs on the walls told these stories in varied artistic fashions. They spoke of the pain of his past, loud and clear; he was never far from difficult reminders. It was perhaps another facet of his self-destructive personality speaking, not allowing him to ever forget.
The scars on his shoulders, hands, legs, and chest certainly never did.
The warmth of the late summer air suddenly seemed stifling to him, and he turned on a fan, opening his window that looked out onto the fields. He paused a moment, fingers exploring the stubble on his chin, watching little specks of light flicker on and off below, in the yard. Fireflies, coming in from the tall grasses. He smiled a happy memory from days long gone and withdrew, instead now moving to his second desk. He unbuttoned his shirt as he went, removing it, and then pulling off the v-neck underneath. Milo ran a distracted hand over his sore chest, fingers pausing at the puckered scars still healing.
His tired eyes went to a row of photos by his door; the faces of the family members who never spoke to him, the friends he barely kept in touch with. The man he had loved, and still did. His loneliness threatened to swallow him whole. At times he still hated his body; still unsure whether he’d made the right choice; still expected the husky young woman’s voice to come from his throat when he spoke - but that voice was gone, dead. Replaced with something deeper that enabled him to further sink into the wallpaper of society -
-except when little old ladies tried to pry into his life.
“Why do you look like a girl?” she had asked.
Who the fuck just straight-up ASKS that? he pondered angrily.
He heaved a sigh, his head falling into his hands as the familiar hum, like the static of a forgotten radio left on, buzzed in his mind. Old habits, familiar cravings left him clenching his fists, alone in the night. Thoughts of several more beers, or a razor blade came to light, and he wrestled with his demons as he had time and time again.
Taking several deep breaths, he moved back to his laptop and composed himself. His eyes drifted once more out the window and he watched the fireflies again.
All that was left for him was to achieve the dream: to have the white coat, to care for patients. He hoped that drive was enough to sustain him for many more years; keep him warm, where his previous relationships and friendships had failed to, severed, turning their backs on him once he took the step to having the altered face, voice, and name.
Milo’s gyspy heart beat on, and he resumed writing his paper, ever searching for his peace that was always out of reach.
__________________________________
therapist asked me to explore what I felt like my gender stuff could become, in the future. 7 to 10 years from now.
so I wrote this.
best case scenario I can imagine for myself.
hard truths come to light.
but.
I think I like the name Milo.
