Soft Butch

One of my family's biggest struggles when I was a baby was convincing people I wasn't an adorable little boy.

One of my family's biggest struggles when I was a baby was convincing people I wasn't an adorable little boy. They wouldn't have had much of a fight if they'd pushed back on the "adorable" part; I was one of those babies who looked like a space alien masquerading as a freshly baked human. My nose and hands were basically grown-up size when I popped into the world. The "girl" part really threw people for a loop, though. Even in a pastel parade of dresses, frills, lace, all-pink everything, strangers kept saying what a handsome guy I was. It was my great-aunt who had the idea to stick a bow to my bald head with bubble gum, until my hair could finally grow in, and even that didn't always work. A man at K-Mart one time called me "young man" and my great-aunt corrected him — "young woman!!!" — but he wouldn't be persuaded. He said I had too many opinions for a girl, even though my opinions were just gobbledygook bubbling out of my little space alien mouth. 

My family longed for my hair like it was Christmas, convinced I was some kind of Rapunzel-in-waiting, that noble locks were coming and would transform me into a beautiful, feminine princess. Unfortunately for them, my personality grew in with my hair, and I began demanding to be styled like my fashion icon, Michael J. Fox's Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties. In fact, I wanted ties. Bowties and neck ties. And button-up shirts. I wanted suit jackets and oxfords. I would have settled for wearing a baseball uniform everywhere, including to church, but the Lord had different ideas. Jesus also was waiting on my hair. He told the Apostle Paul to tell the Corinthian church that long hair is a woman's glory. And dang it made me spitting mad to be told how to dress by a man who'd never even owned a pair of cleats! 

I never pitched a bigger fit than when I was forced to wear a dress. My parents thought I was just being a brat, I think, that I just wanted to get my way — but the truth was that putting on a dress felt like putting on someone else's skin. It made my bones itch. So they finally struck me a deal: I could wear whatever I wanted, as long as my mom could pick out my church clothes, my picture day clothes, and I promised to keep my hair long. 

My mom asked me one time, in tears, if I wanted to be a boy, and I laughed and laughed. Of course I didn't want to be a boy! My interest in boys was exactly zero! I loved being a girl, and hanging out with other girls (only), and playing on girls' sports teams, and singing in girls' choirs. I liked watching other girls do their hair and put on makeup, the way they opened their mouths juuust so for some silly reason when they were brushing on mascara. I loved women comic book characters and women singers and if I had only one quarter I was always going to choose Ms. Pac-Man.  I loved women's history, too; I was so proud of us! Sally Ride. Eleanor Rosevelt. Rosa Parks. Bessie Coleman. Harriet Tubman. Anne Frank. Helen Keller. I read Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman" in the school library when I was 12 years old, and I went back to read it so many times, I memorized it in my heart.

It’s the fire in my eyes
And the flash of my teeth
The swing in my waist
And the joy in my feet

It only occurred to me that I actually could cut my hair because one of my favorite book characters chopped off her hair. Katsa, a Graceling blessed with fighting, with survival, a swordswoman and an archer. "I should like to cut it all off," she tells her maidservant, when she complains that Katsa doesn't brush her hair enough. "Would you cut my hair off?" she asks her boyfriend, Po. "It drives me mad and I've never wanted it." And finally, at the inn in the mountains, on the way to save the kingdom, she asks the daughter of an innkeeper to whack it off. "As short as you can," she says, "as short as any man's. The shorter you can cut it, the happier I'll be."

The jolt that ran through me when I read those words; it was as magic as any captured moonbeam. 

I waited until my mom died last year to really cut off my own hair. I don't know why. Maybe I didn't want to break her heart anymore than I already had. But I used Katsa's words when I did it, a billion years after I first read her book. "As short as any man's," I said — and oh! the thrill I felt when those clippers hit my neck! 

On the way home from the barber, I snapped a hundred selfies. Step, step, snap. Step, snap. Step, step, step, snap. I tousled my short hairs. Pressed my bangs down. Pushed my bangs back. I ran my fingers through it, all over it, tousled it some more. I was going to ask my wife to tell me the truth about how it looked, and I was going to ask her if she thought even more people were going to be confused by me now. (I never grew out of that.) I was going to ask her if a baseball cap still looked okay, front ways and backwards, and also a beanie. I was going to ask her a lot of things, but I forgot them all, because when she saw me she said: 

Oh. You look like you!