This transgender coming of age story is inspired by musician Laura Jane Grace of Against Me!
I wrote this piece for Hawk & Cleaver's 'The Other Stories' podcast.
Alicia wasn’t always Alicia. Not on the surface at least. She was raised as a little boy but from a young age she knew that her physical gender was only skin deep. She was often scared and felt alone, as there was nobody she knew in her small town that seemed to be suffering from the same crisis that she was. It was before the days of the internet, when she could have confided in chat rooms and forums about the confusion she felt. She was forced to suffer in silence, keeping her dysphoria a dark secret that she felt a great shame at having to bear.
Alicia didn’t fantasise about being Axl Rose or Jim Morrison or Ian Curtis. She wanted to be Debbie Harry. Siouxsie Sioux. Madonna.
When she started wearing makeup it was easy to continue to hide in plain sight. Glam rock was popular and all of the men in bands were wearing just as much makeup as the girls. Her hair was big and her pants were tight, but it didn’t seem to matter.
She couldn’t hide behind it forever, though. She knew that when she grew up, she would have to be true to herself and live her life as a woman.
Of course, the common misconceptions surrounding gender and sexuality instantly rose to the service. Her Dad had called her a faggot, and that really hurt. It was the unchecked anger in his eyes, the utter contempt that replaced the once loving gaze.
Alicia took a while to come to terms with this, but when she did it felt like an astronomical weight had been lifted from her shoulders. If her friends couldn’t accept her for who she was, they weren’t her true friends. If her family couldn’t accept her for who she was, they weren’t her true family.
She’d find new friends. She’d find new family. When some have such deep-set prejudices, buried deep in subconscious from a young age as you're exposed to the ill-informed and regurgitated opinions of those who raise them or those they call peers, it really can effect how they see the world.
Those prejudices are hard to dig out, their roots tough and stubborn, taking the hardest of pulls to even dislodge, let alone remove completely. It's easy to be closed-minded, especially if that's all you've known your entire life. To open up, to really see the beauty of our planet and all of the colourful people within it, accepting them for their differences and celebrating the wonder of them - that is what it means to truly be a citizen of the world. A human being.
Alicia had always been in bands, whether it was fronting them with gender fluid bravado or settling in the background and developing an unbreakable rapport within the rhythm section. Music was something that really helped her express myself and she could do it just the same stone cold sober as she could with a belly full of strong tequila, it just didn’t matter.
When the guitars were raging and the drums were pounding her heart felt like her soul was going to spill over and out of her mouth, ready to join with the whoops of delight and raw energy displayed by the crowd (if they were lucky to have one).
Alicia started collecting tattoos on her skin, moments in her life forever remembered by the black ink that now covered much of her body, from her arms to her chest to her back to her neck. Places she had visited, people she had met, words she had heard or read or written – some designed by her and some designed by friends. A few she had tattooed on herself during a misjudged faze where she had been convinced she could make a decent tattoo artist so used much of her left forearm as practice.
Relationships came and went, some abusive and some way too intense for her to deal with. After years she had gained enough success to be able to tour the world and was making enough money by putting out album after album of critically acclaimed punk rock, but she always felt sad. Numb. Cold.
Drugs took over. Bad characters latched on to the tour and Alicia developed unpleasant habits. She needed the escape that being high gave her and she needed it way too often.
She slipped into a routine of narcotics, booze and casual sex, often crying herself to sleep at night. She didn’t’ know what was wrong and how to make it better. That was until one sunny afternoon in Belgium.
Alicia was signing autographs at a festival, the band and her gathered behind a table in a tent as hundreds of kids queued for a chance to meet their idols. She was nursing a hell of a hangover and although she continued to scribble her name on posters and albums and skin she felt like she was nearing the edge, as if it would be one or two more bad nights before she’d end up in the emergency room again or worse, dead. Having choked on her own vomit in her bunk while her bandmates slept soundly around her, all knowing that she had a problem but none of them having the guts to tell her that she did.
Alicia looked up as a trans girl neared the front of the queue. She had some lyrics tattooed on her forearms from a song Alicia had wrote called ‘Dead To Me’, which was about her father, a man she hadn’t talked to for almost twenty years.
‘Disown me if you will. You never owned me anyway.’ There were tears in her eyes as she held out a copy of the record the song was taken from, the breakout album ‘Pity For The Ignorant’. Alicia signed it but didn’t take her eyes off of the beautiful girl, who reminded her of herself when she used to sing ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ at the top of her lungs into a hairbrush in front of the mirror.
The exchange was brief and silent. A look, a smile, a nod of understanding. But in that moment, surrounded by the flashing of camera bulbs and the screaming of fans, they unknowingly and simultaneously saved each other’s lives.
Ben Errington
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