How it all began (Part 2)
Actually, it all started much much earlier...
Of course, my gender dysphoria goes back earlier than the mid-90’s.
Some of my earliest memories are actually from being in kindergarten, but they are fuzzy at best — like hazy polaroids. I can see the images, but the context is missing. I just know they happened.
So instead, I’ll start with one of the earliest clear memories I have of realizing something was… off.
It was 1978. I was eight years old, living in Florence, Italy. Back then, Italy didn’t do Halloween, but it did go all-in on Carnevale. Which Google describes as:
“A huge celebration starting about a month before Ash Wednesday. Revelers in Italy celebrate for multiple weekends with sweeping parades, elaborate costumes, and plenty of brightly colored confetti.”
Like most kids, I was obsessed with superheroes and comic books, so my mom decided to make me my very own costume. But not a costume based on a pre-existing comic book character, no. This was to be my very own special superhero — Super Kays!
She went all out—hand-stitched red cape, homemade mask, vinyl decals for my chest logo, even matching graphics for the boots. However, there was one last element missing — tights! So off we went to a local department store to find me a suitable pair of navy blue tights to match the rest of my costume.
I remember feeling euphoric as we wandered into the little girls section of the store, an area that had been forbidden up to that moment. Electricity was running through my veins, even though I had no idea why I was feeling this way.
After we got home from the store, I put on the tights for the first time and it was simply magical, I was feeling happy in them.
A little while later, my mom told me we had to run errands and that I should take the costume off. I asked if I could keep the tights on under my pants.
She said yes.
With great relief I could keep holding on to that sense of joy for just a bit longer.
Looking back, I wish that might have raised a few questions for her. But it was the ‘70s and parents weren’t provided a checklist for “signs your kid might be trans.”
And to anyone who wonders how an eight-year-old could possibly know something was off about their gender: I promise you, they can. Because I did.
Over the next few years, whenever the opportunity presented itself and my mom left the house, I would sneak into her closet and try on her clothes. This went on and off, all the way until I left for college—when I lost the privacy (and the wardrobe access) that had made those moments possible.
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