i haven’t gone too far beyond painted nails & colorful hair in public, i mean i went in full frank makeup for a rocky horror midnight, but that was it, & i’m an enby late starter so my gender expression is in a constant state of catch up, fighting against the shit i was raised around, casual slurs to reinforce standards, & i still remember telling my mom randomly as a kid that even though i’m a boy i sometimes feel more like a girl, & we were in the car, stopped at a light or something, & she didn’t say anything but that was maybe better in the long run, & it’s half a lifetime later & my hair is kinda long but not yet at the length i’m wanting, & other than that i mostly present male these days, wait till i get home to put on a skirt, have my partner do my makeup, dance around the house, pucker lipstick, twirl & unfurl, become who it is i’d like to always be outwardly, & it took years of playing various fallout games as a pixel-perfect clone of myself for me to realize with 76 that i could be a more accurate version, at least accurate to what i looked like in my head, & it’s sad that a video game character creation tool can be more gender affirming than real life sometimes, but i tell myself it’s baby steps, it has to be, & i can mark it in the length of my locks, looking in the mirror, hair touching shoulders, not always cooperating, sometimes getting in the way, & a lifetime of father-assisted buzzcuts has left me ill-prepared to care for this messy bob if that’s what i’m cultivating, & harmony calls me pretty now, affirmation like deep-heart love, to look this way & to be seen this way & for the one you love to love you just like that, & trying not to cry from the gratitude, or maybe it’s all the old shame being let out, has to go somewhere, & to hear the venus in furs, 2hb, to groove to that original example i had in the form of velvet goldmine, watching it as an impressionable youth, those celluloid pictures of living, moved by that screen dream, & not knowing then where it would lead but knowing that i couldn’t be that buzzcut forever, & i’m finally in a place where i can see the possibilities stretching out in front of me, & the words are taking on a new meaning as i listen again, & i’m hoping that it’ll fade away never, because i finally want to be here, & if i’m gonna be here then i want to be me, really me, & i think i can make a real go of it too, so fuck it i say, fuck it with a heaping helping of why the hell not.

Nick Olson (he/they) is the author of the novels Here’s Waldo and The Brother We Share and is the Editor-in-Chief of (mac)ro(mic). His third novel, Afterglow, will release in June of 2022. A Best Small Fictions nominee, finalist for Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Award, and 2021 Wigleaf longlister in and from Chicagoland, he’s been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart, Fiction Southeast, and other fine places. Find him online at nickolsonbooks.com or on Twitter @nickolsonbooks.