Five-inch stiletto heels. One strap across the toes, a single strap wrapping around the ankle to fasten. They were the most beautiful objects I had ever seen. Sitting atop a pile of shoes in my mother’s closet, I couldn’t stop looking at them: their color, carmine with golden flecks. I could hear them calling to me, summoning me, as if we had known each other in a previous life. I was confident of one thing: we would absolutely know each other in this life. It was but one of a million moments in my life when I knew that I was a girl. I, and I alone, was able to disregard the physical body to which I was born and acknowledge who I truly was. As I coveted those beautiful shoes, my appetite to acquire and wear them became insatiable.
I had always been extremely feminine, in look and deed. My hair was long and the platinum blonde color that only young children can achieve in the sunlight. I was attracted to everything feminine. I was already playing with my mother’s makeup, shoes, and clothes. I would wear her eyeglasses, which rendered me practically blind, but they were glasses made for a girl. Therefore, they were made for me. I walked with a sway generally reserved for models or beauty pageant contestants. I was obsessed with all my female friends’ possessions, their clothes, shoes, makeup, jewelry, toys, and most of all, the Bonne Belle lip gloss with the rollerball that smelled so good. I can close my eyes and still smell it today. I wanted those things for myself, and I secretly hated others for having it all when it was forbidden to me. Now, in those early formative years, children rarely understand the true meaning of “hate.” It’s simply a word tossed around, usually in the heat of the moment having no real value. But for me, I knew hate. I knew it well. It was my constant companion.
My mission, get my hands on those carmine stilettos and wear them. I would have to be cautious in my eagerness not to botch my execution. As a seven-year-old boy living in the South in the early 1970s, getting caught wearing your mother’s heels was no reason to celebrate from anyone’s perspective. Nevertheless, seven-year-old me had already known for six years that I was indeed a girl.
It would not be the first time I would be caught doing something unnatural for a boy, and it certainly would not be the last. Like a lioness cub stalking her prey for the first time, I devised a strategy to bring us together. When I first set out on this covert operation, I was clandestine in my approach. A watchful eye was ubiquitous in a household like the one where I grew up. After acquiring the heels, I would prance around for as long as I thought prudent, elated by my success and exhilarated by how much I felt at home in them. It was always an ethereal experience. I had never felt more comfortable in my entire being than when I was wearing those heels.
Eventually, surreptitious would give way to carelessness, and my grandmother caught me wearing them. I was not afraid or embarrassed. I was not ashamed or humiliated. She would go on to tell me that boys don’t wear girl’s shoes. My internal response in these situations was always the same: screaming, “I’m not a boy!” My external response was also always the same: silence. I had no way to explain. No words to accurately convey my feelings. I didn’t know how to explain to them what I was feeling, and even less confidence that they would receive it if I could. I felt like a girl. I felt it from the time I woke up until the time I went to sleep. I felt it every day. But no one was ready then. Not me, not them, not the world.
There was always a battle ensuing, the struggle to keep the harsh and hurtful words at bay while enjoying the contentment I felt, fulfilling my desire to do what “girls” do. Feeling like a girl was paramount to everything else in my life. Getting caught wearing those carmine heels would mark the first time I would come to the realization that being who I truly am was going to be an arduous and painful journey.
I would look in the mirror, and it was like a reflection in the water, disturbed by the rain. It was me, but it wasn’t me. My reflection was elusive. I could never reconcile how I felt inside with what I saw on the outside. Was this also why no one else could see I was really a girl? They could clearly see I was not a typical adolescent boy. They called me names, made fun of me, taunted, teased, and tormented me in every instance possible. “You can see I am different!” “You can see I am desperately trying to be a girl!” (Not trying to be queer. Not trying to be abnormal. Not trying to be unnatural. Desperately trying to be a girl!)
Decades later, people would say to me, “You always acted like a girl!” It was no act. I knew that’s who I was from the beginning of my life. There was never a doubt or question in my mind concerning my true identity. This awareness would later become a vitriolic debate based on the conjecture that I chose to be this way. As if anyone would choose this life, choose to be persecuted, choose to be tormented, choose to be ridiculed and ostracized. I often ask my heterosexual friends today, when was the moment you chose to be straight? At what point in your life did you decide you were going to be heterosexual? Certainly, the universe did not bestow the ability to choose only to those of us in the LGBTQIA community. That would seem terribly unfair. Of course, there is never an articulate answer to this question. It always swings back around to what is “normal.” As if normal doesn’t simply mean “conventionality.” It would also become a bone of contention between me and my Christian friends. “God doesn’t make mistakes!”--as if my life could only be described as a mistake.
I hated everything "boy.” I hated boys’ clothes. For a brief period, and I do mean brief, my family attended church. I didn’t hate going to church; I hated going to church dressed as a boy. It wasn’t right. These are not the clothes I’m supposed to be wearing. “This is not who I am!” We’ve already established I preferred girls’ shoes. I hated boys' toys. Trucks, guns, balls, anything “boy.” I wanted a girls’ bicycle, not the bicycle with the bar in the middle. I hated any recreational activity geared towards boys. Hunting, fishing, camping; while things are much different in the twenty-first century, those activities were generally mainstream “boy” in the 1970s. I hated any sport meant for “boys.” Baseball and softball are not that far apart except for the players. I never wanted to play baseball but longed to play softball. I was never interested in playing football, but I was always interested in being a cheerleader. “Impossible” my mother would say to me. “A boy can’t be a cheerleader!” Of course, I couldn’t. Not in the south. Not in the 1970s. Not in my family.
I was fortunate enough to have been born with only one lung that functioned and a very severe case of asthma. I spent an enormous amount of time in the hospital suffering from pneumonia. I was ill a lot. I continue to fall prey to pneumonia a few times a year as an adult. Physicians told my mother that I would probably not live past the age of eleven or twelve as my lungs were severely damaged. I often joke now that I’m in my late fifties, after having been through so many tempestuous events, illnesses, suicide attempts, and life in general as a transsexual, that you can’t kill the devil. I’m here to stay.
But the word “fortunate” must seem out of place to you. I believe it allowed me some grace in my childhood with the choices I would ultimately make. At some point I grew weary of pretending and I began to ask for permission to be who I truly was through not-so-subtle requests. At Christmas, when my two brothers would ask for presents like bicycles, guns, trucks and other things “boy,” I asked for things like the Wonder Woman doll, the bionic woman doll, and the Barbie hair and makeup head. And I got them. I thought my mother felt bad for me, my unfortunate health circumstances and allowed me to have all of those “girl” things, perhaps thinking that my life would be short, and it would be cruel and inhumane to deny me some happiness before my ultimate demise. And I thought she did it because she loved me. I would come to question both later in my life. I would learn truths that would change the way I saw the world and the people in it completely.
There was always a lot of teasing. A lot of name calling. A lot of bullying. And not just from my peers and other kids but scores of adults. I would have to accept that this was how my life would continue evolving. I was unable, or what I would later come to realize, unwilling to suppress my femininity. I would have to develop a thick skin if I were going to remain rebellious in the face of what was considered “normal.” Those carmine stilettos would remain a beacon, a lighthouse to guide me through the tumultuous storms of emotions and the rough waters of tears to remind me who I truly was. A woman who would someday wear them. A woman who would wear them well. A woman who would wear them seeking the attention of men. And so, I did.
Skylar Colby is a 53 year old transsexual who has been living as a woman for 33 years.