My Awkward Phase

A door banged, and Coach’s footsteps approached. Miguel flung me aside, spat out “fucking faggot,” and he and Jack sprinted to the exit. Coach eyed me with contempt.
“What’s your problem, Rios? Crybabies don’t get special treatment.”
Coach taught “Human Development”. He hated gays and probably thought transsexuals were even more despicable.
“I feel sick.”
“No excuses. Just do it, Rios.”
I promised I would, but instead, I faked a knee injury, forged a doctor’s note, and got excused from physical education.
Retreat from Rubicon
Surreptitious HRT had brought me to the threshold of visible transsexual transition, the tipping point where androgyny succumbs to femininity. I was torn by conflicting priorities.
If I interrupted HRT my skin would revert to oily acne and my hair to a tangled mop. Testosterone unopposed by female hormones would irreversibly the change my face and body into a man’s.
Transsexual transition delayed until adulthood produces imperfect results. Adult transitioners develop squared jaws and thickened brows, which even the most expert facial feminization surgeons cannot eliminate. Their voices are deep, their bodies are thick, so they are clocked, mocked and persecuted.
Adolescent transition produces a more passable result. If I continued with HRT, my breast and nipple development would accelerate. But the emergence of female secondary sex characteristics coincides with permanent and irreversible spermatic infertility.
I was ambivalent, determined to fulfill my female destiny, anxious about transitioning in a hotbed of transphobia and guilty over denying my father the continuation of the Rios lineage. The prospect of infertility worried me, but a future maturing as a male was even worse.
But my locker room encounter proved that I could not transition under the radar in the transphobic fishbowl of high school. I got a post office box for delivery of pharmaceuticals and found an online pharmacy to prescribe Aldactone, the commercial version of spironolactone (Spiro), an anti-androgen that stops masculinization. I curtailed my estrogen and progesterone intake and went in a gender holding pattern. I would resume my transition at college far from my parents and the intolerance of Uni High.