LONG HAIR BO BURNHAM
I’m in my bedroom and my therapist Greg is talking to me from my computer screen. Our Zoom boxes are exactly the same size. I can’t stop fidgeting. I’m happy Greg can only see me from the chest up. Underneath the tabletop desk, I pull at my fingers and knead the center of my palm until the skin is red and humid and tender. I wonder what he would think, if he could see the things I have to do to make myself comfortable enough to be uncomfortable and talk to him for an hour every other week.
Today, we are talking about my gender, which is both woman and not woman, both non-binary and resistant to any kind of terminology, even the kind that’s supposedly made for people like me. But that’s the problem. The problem, I tell Greg, is that I feel like the language is not made for me. I am still outside of it. It doesn’t feel right. I conjure examples of things that are not me.
There’s a would-be-influencer actor I follow on Instagram. They pose topless, exposing their scarred chest with the caption “Trans is beautiful” and too many hashtags. In their story slides, they explicitly implore me to like their content, bookmark their content, share their content. In the next slide, they insist they have been shadow banned by Instagram, a term I only know from them. “Are you guys seeing my content?”
I follow the actor, I admit, to dissect their performance of gender and to make fun of them with my wife.
It’s gross, I tell Greg. Using gender, using identity for empty digital capital and overwrought ploys for attention. I feel like my identity has been co-opted by the kind of queer people who think people died at Stonewall.
Greg agrees with me and I can’t tell if he’s pandering or being sincere. I remind myself, it doesn’t matter. He’s your therapist. You are here for exploration, affirmation, moral support, and hopefully growth, however long that takes. Still, I say nothing of my own behavior. My own empty ploys for attention, watching this person unfold across the internet to feel superior to them.
Greg kindly, gently redirects the focus back on me. If that isn’t you, he says, do you have an idea of what or who might better represent the ways you feel about your gender?
I do, of course, but that’s not as fun to talk about. I pretend to think about Greg’s question, watch myself on the computer screen out of the corner of my eye. Pause, look up, tilt your head to the left. Think, I think. Look like you’re thinking.
Maybe, I say. I guess.
Greg nods, waiting for more.
I tell him lies or half-truths, for now. Alison Bechdel. RB Butcher. I list my masculine-of-center heroes. I like Mae Martin, I say. They feel like the closest thing I have to representation. I’ve been watching their spastic, thought-process comedy since my sophomore year of college. Greg smiles when I talk about them and this makes me smile, too. I get it, I think. He’s led me here, away from the actor on Instagram and into something closer to joy, recognition, community.
Our session ends after I thank him for taking the time and tell him I hope he has a good night. I stop myself from apologizing, but only nearly. Sorry I went off on all those tangents. Sorry I talked so much. Sorry I’m not a better person yet. I close my computer, feeling embarrassed and off-balance.
The therapy has been helping me with my anxiety, my overthinking, my need to please, but still, each time I leave with the underlying feeling of regret. Like I’ve done something wrong. Like I’ve said too much. Two weeks ago, I admitted to Greg that I had been thinking about top surgery for years. Five years ago, I told my brother I would probably do it if I had bigger boobs. It was and wasn’t a joke. It was the only time I ever talked about it to someone who is not my wife.
When I told Greg I had been thinking about it, I thought it would make something happen but it didn’t. He was understanding, accommodating, and assured me that he would help me cross that bridge if or when I decided to cross it. It was a good conversation. I cried for an hour afterwards. I didn’t cry because I felt lighter or because I had gone through something cathartic or because I was relieved to have gotten it off my chest (please, no pun intended). I cried because I was embarrassed and had never been so embarrassed in my entire life.
At the time, I pulled out my journal and wrote, “You need to tell him about this next time. Stop fucking around.” Next to these words is a pool of ink from where I pressed the pen so hard into the page there’s now a permanent dent on each next page of the book. A constant reminder, a scar left behind. Sick of myself and sick of crying, I closed my eyes and pressed my palms so hard against them I could feel the blood pounding in my temples and my head. After, I fled the house, picked up takeout dinner, cried in my car, and hated myself.
I haven’t mentioned top surgery since. Shame is insidious. It lives inside the house, so to speak.
✺
What I don’t say in my therapy sessions:
I want a flat chest. I want a flat chest. I want a flat chest and long hair. I want thin, long arms and thin, long legs. I want an awkward, gangly, genderless body. I want long, shaggy hair. I want to think about my body only sometimes.
I want, I want, I want.
I sometimes fantasize about chopping my legs off because I think my thighs are too big, my hips too big, my calves too curved and feminine. What a disgusting thing to think about the body.
I wonder if it’s my fault, or if it’s the situation we’ve all found ourselves in.
At work, straight women joke about how big their salads are.
I want to claw my eyes out.
Late at night, I watch a comedy special and feel inspired to write for the first time in months. I write this in the notes app on my iPhone:
My gender is long hair Bo Burnham. My gender is Bo Burnham trapped inside. The pain of making art is the pain of making yourself. The pain of wanting to make great art is the pain of wanting to break the body, re-make the body into something else. And the pain of making the body is tired and necessary. You want to make something real so you take the only real thing you have and put it down on paper and try to make it “work.” But real doesn’t have to work. Real just is. Try catching smoke between your fingertips. The only way to take the pain is just to love it, too. To love it just as much as you’re supposed to love yourself. But what if loving the pain is the same thing as inflicting it? No. That’s not true. People like to say they are more than their pain and trauma. Of course you are. But you are also your pain, and you are also your trauma. Just as you are exactly the same thing as the soft-skin-underbelly of your forearm. The subtle bend of your nose—broken years ago, rugby. Your itchy armpit. You are all of it. To say anything else is to refuse to know yourself. And what a tragedy. Now laugh.
I don’t know what it is and think it might be nothing. I like it anyway.
I up my therapy sessions to go weekly. I log on every Tuesday at 5 p.m. and talk to Greg about my mom, my brother, my scary Trumper brother, and what kind of family I want to have.
I talk to Greg about my dead dad, who has been dead for almost four years, which is too long. It will always be too long.
I talk to Greg about my cat. Hold on, I say, my cat is scratching at the door. Sorry, I say, and Greg laughs and tells me I never have to apologize, which is weird and good to hear.
I talk to Greg about the book I wrote and the book I am writing now. I am terrified of both of them.
When I run out of things to talk about, or when I am having a slow, hard day, or when I am feeling shy and a little guilty for making this stranger listen to my problems and care about them, Greg asks me about my gender.
How’s the gender stuff going?
I had another therapist once. Her name was Margaret. She would ask me how I felt every time I went to see her and I would say, “I don’t know.” And she would say, “We always know. Everybody knows exactly how they feel and what they think about things.”
What she didn’t say: I was just too chicken shit to say it.