I arrived nameless as the doctor put a pink bow on my head: a diluted scarlet letter F.
My parents believed with their whole hearts that I’d be a boy. No reason. No shadow penis on an ultrasound. Only faith in my father’s chromosome-carrying sperm.(1)
I imagine, on that snowy evening, when a nurse asked them for my name, they both blinked, and my mother continued watching Remington Steele.
My father abhors being wrong, especially when a woman (girl) tells him so. But perhaps he clocked my birth as a half-win, proof of his virility against his ex-wife’s divorce petition stating his infertility.
Perhaps he considered my moments-old self the test run for his future baby boy. A lady from his Missouri Synod Lutheran Church wrote that exact sentiment in my baby shower card, and I read it 35+ years later.(2)
This left naming me up to my mother.(3)
Names are powerful. They speak to destiny.
I was eventually named Erica after Erica Kane, Susan Lucci’s infamous character on the soap opera All My Children. Erica means “eternal ruler” or “ever powerful.”
Lucci played Erica from 1970 to 2011 when the show ended. Beginning in 1991, she made $1 million per episode, and it took 18 years of nominations before she won a Best Lead Actress Daytime Emmy.
TV Guide called Erica “unequivocally the most famous soap opera character in the history of daytime TV.” She was an antihero before women characters were allowed to be. Erica debuted having TV’s first abortion in 1973, the year of Roe V. Wade. She ran her own cosmetics empire and was a fashion icon, married many times, and survived childhood rape.
Erica Kane is the exact type of “bitch goddess” character drag queens adore. If RuPaul’s Drag Race had been around in the 1980s/90s, we would’ve seen Susan Lucci portrayed on Snatch Game and the actress as a guest judge.
Unbeknownst to her, my mother’s naming gift transformed the F into a glittery rainbow of possibilities. A place where the person playing Erica at Snatch Game was me. Because I wasn’t exactly the girl the doctor who looked at my baby genitals thought I was.(4)
F is for Faggot. It’s like a prophecy. I knew I was gay before I knew what that was. I knew I was queer first, and then later kind of figured out this gender stuff. I never knew gender without my sexuality, and bisexuality means whatever my gender, I’m queer.
F is for Faggot. I just took the long way around the sun. We had to travel to Mordor before the Eagles returned us to the Shire.(5)
Sometimes drag is another F-word Fun. Even if, eventually, it’s exhausting, and I wanted to rip those itchy, itchy tights off my body. Drag is a cover and a way to make it through the cruel, patriarchal gender enforcers for someone like me.
I still like sparkles and bright colors. I happily played with Barbies and grew up on a ranch where no one wore anything but jeans, tshirts, and rubber irrigation boots. You don’t muck stalls or empty rabbit cages wearing party dresses. I would’ve missed those Barbies had my baby genitals looked differently, and I never longed for trucks or Ninja Turtles because I have two younger cis brothers and we were stocked up.
My father only “intervened” on my queerness after I’d already eaten pussy and sucked dick. He would’ve done so earlier on a faggy son. I guess I’m lucky that my uncle only mocked my unused womb at 21 instead of playing smear the queer when I was 5.
Erica served me well for survival. But the drag has outlasted her welcome. An uncomfortable skin I hauled around far too long into adulthood to cover my trauma and fear. As Dua Lipa sings for the Barbie soundtrack, “Watch me dance, dance the night away/My heart could be burnin’, but you won’t see it on my face.”
So don’t be shocked or sad if you never saw my transness on my face. You were never meant to. I served CUNT.(6)
But Snatch Game only lasts so long, and even All My Children was canceled in 2011 and Frodo went to Valinor to heal his heart. This Fag’s journey the long way comes to a sort of end in queer masculinity. Whatever, at age 13, I saw in David Bowie and said, “I want what he has. That’s me.”
Please amend my birth certificate to say assigned F(aggot) at birth, for this destiny has come to pass.
1. Sex characteristics are, of course, much more biologically complex than chromosomes and aren’t binary. Many people are born intersex. Sex is also a cultural construct. Plus, I’ve never tested my chromosomes, so an XX assumption is a smart bet, but you’re still gambling.
2. Yes, my hoarder mother guarantees I’ll be reusing the shower paper from 1983.
3. My father is a liar who can pepper bits of truth in a narrative to expose another’s weakness or make it believable enough. He’s the one who recounted my naming origin; and my mother has never provided a counter narrative.
4. It’s so gross how much people are obsessed with baby genitals. That’s what gender assigned at birth (AGAB) starts with! No, Gina, I don’t what to know if your baby bump has a penis or a vulva. Don’t even get me started on the vile and biased ways people treat babies based on AGAB. No, Pam, I don’t want to hear about how my cousin’s less-than-a-year-old baby is a lady killer. He cannot even walk; you’re disgusting.
5. Yes, I am skipping over stuff, okay! It’s a metaphor! I never felt more correctly gendered when I heard two trans women discuss their love of The Lord of the Rings and how they never saw themselves in it because it famously lacks women. On the other hand, I was ready for adventure with my bros that I deeply and romantically loved (in the gay and not gay ways).
6a. Creativity, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent. Or a Celtic word with origins in female power and freedom that the patriarchy turned into a slur. As a friend who attempted to read my palm once told me, “You are very Celtic.”
6b. A whole other essay is the punishment I’ve received all my life from cishet white women gender bullies who sniffed out that there was something wrong with me and sought to correct or punish me to gain favor with (little “c”) conservative cishet white men. The leopards will eat your face too.