Excerpt from a short story “Dead of Winter”

I met a girl, Josie, early last summer not long after I moved up here. By then, I had facial hair and guys would nod their heads at me and start small talk about the weather or ask me questions about my truck. Since my sophomore year in high school when I fell in love with my biology teacher Ms. Martinez, cut off my hair and tore my dresses into kitchen rags, the only small talk men on the street had for me was to ask how two girls do it.

A little tuft of beard aside, I am five foot four and shaped like a pear. If I wear pants big enough to hide my ass, I look like I have elephantitis in my legs. The fact that I am passing as a man confirmed any doubt I ever had that people see what they want to believe. Josie was curvy, with muscly arms and long, wavy hair. When she looked at me, I mean gave me eyes, damn. I thought the strangest moment in my transition would be when a man took me for a part of the brotherhood. But that was nothing compared to this woman looking me square in the face; I could hear her thoughts and they were calling me a man. Fuck baptism in the evangelical rivers of deliverance, you want to be reborn? Have a sex change.