“Tits” by Dalanie Beach

       I am twelve years old, turning to one side before the mirror in my mom’s bathroom, running a hand down my body, from sternum to stomach: willing it all flat. 

       I am fourteen years old, running across the front lawn toward my grandmother’s car to shout something at her before she pulls out of the driveway. As I trot back up to the house, my mom narrows her eyes at my bouncing chest, scrutinizing the little teepees my nipples now form under my shirt. She scoffs, “You’re too old to run around without a bra.”

       I am fifteen years old, flipping with a cautious sort of interest through a magazine article targeted at teenage girls, titled “Make Peace With Your Boobs!” and trying, like the good little Catholic girl I’ve been raised to be, to swallow down my disgust long enough to think such a thing is possible

       I am eighteen years old, dressed in the see-through, uniform shirt of my high school, resting my head on my desk, when a tall boy I barely know well enough to dislike snickers, “I like your pink zebra-stripe bra.”

       I am twenty-three years old, lying on my partner’s bed, trying to understand the feeling the poster of a shirtless K-Pop idol is stirring awake inside me. It’s an achy, burning feeling. Not desire. Not attraction. More like… envy. I want that scrawny boy’s chest. Or more accurately, I want the freedom, the relief, the rightness that a chest like that could afford me.

       I am twenty-four years old, standing before the mirror in the first apartment I share with my partner. Beige-colored tape holds my chest down, compressing it into something almost affirming, almost me. It’s shocking how much of a difference the tape makes. The person in the mirror is so tantalizingly close to how I feel inside. Half-relieved, with hot tears gathering, I turn to the side. A cold gut-punch of dysphoria. Tape and binders can only do so much to hide my useless mammary tissue, which cannot be removed safely without surgery, and the brutal reminder of this fact sends me over the edge. I turn on the bathroom fan and sob.

       I am twenty-five years old, listening to the words my mother allegedly said after I had confessed to her that I wanted to pursue top-surgery (chest masculinization surgery) as a permanent solution to my dysphoria. “How dare she [my mother does not respect my pronouns] want this surgery when there are women with breast cancer who don’t have a choice?” 

       This response, transphobic in the worst way, also follows a cruel, nonsensical line of logic that my partner later pointed out: “You might as well say, ‘How dare your mom have five kids when there are people in the world who can’t have children? How dare your mom live in a house when there are homeless people in the world? How dare your mom eat food when there are people starving?’” 

       I have craved the relief of a flat chest since before I could articulate it, before I knew the difference between sex and gender, before I understood what trans meant, before I had thought deeply enough about my own subscription to gender roles to challenge their gross inaccuracies and injustices.

       It will be a painful and invasive surgery, with a lengthy recovery time, and I would not be pursuing it if I didn’t want it with all I am. 

       I think about it every day. I cannot dress, shower, undress, pass a mirror, or move in a way that sets them in motion without wanting it: to be, for the rest of my life, without tits.