Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin

If I had set the school on fire, I would have been in jail. Come on! That’s really a heinous crime, no matter how old you are. I didn’t do that. I was just really mad.
    At Nassau University Medical Center, a psychiatric center, Mariah was put on all kinds of medications.
    It was horrible. It was like being at a cuckoo house. I was a zombie. The meds made me think slow, move slow. I had been one of the bright kids in my class. I’m not a genius, but I have good insights, and if I study, I’m really good. The medicine delayed my concentration. I couldn’t do math. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t run. The medicine made me flip out.
    I was not crazy. I knew it, but they didn’t know it. And I was still acting up, still cursing people, and they go by your behavior.

    When Mariah turned twelve, she was placed in a state hospital called Sagamore. She started gaining weight, lots and lots of weight.
    I went from weighing ninety pounds to 120 . . . to 150 . . . to 175.
    She was moved to yet another placement center, currently called MercyFirst, in Syosset, Long Island. At the time it was Saint Mary’s Children’s Center. Mariah hated that place. And then another weird thing happened.
    I was starting to look like a girl. I had a girl’s face and a high-pitched voice. My chest wasn’t like a man’s chest. I was growing women’s boobs with large areolae. People would ask me if I was a girl, and I used to get mad.
    Everybody else went from being a boy to being a man. It seemed like I was turning from being a boy to being a woman. Personally, I think it was all the medicines I was on. I was on a whole lot of meds.
    How the hell does a boy start looking like a girl? Why?
    Everybody else was getting deeper voices. Everybody else was getting facial hair. Everybody else was getting bigger penises.
    Now I’m glad my penis is small. I’ve never even used it. But at the time, I wanted it to be big because I wanted to be with a girl. I told myself,
If I had a big dick, I’d be with a girl.
    I was still very popular. The staff loved me, and the kids loved me. But I was very emotional. I was a drama queen, crying all the time. I became a crybaby, clinging like a little boy to its mother — or a little girl.
    I didn’t like that about me. I tried my hardest to be a guy again. I played football and ran track. I tried to lose weight. No matter how hard I tried to be a guy, I looked like a girl. I was really pissed off.
    Somebody said that if you drink liquor, you get a lower voice. I was drinking. It’s hard to drink liquor when you’re thirteen.
    “Smoke cigarettes. It will make you have a deep voice,” a friend told me. I was smoking cigarettes back to back to back to back. It didn’t even work. It kinda lowered my voice a little. But I can’t scream. I used to be able to scream, but I can’t scream no more, so I guess it had a little effect.
    The many medications made Mariah lethargic and slow-witted. Another patient there took advantage of her weakened state.
    This guy got me to perform oral sex on him. I thought I was doing the right thing by performing on him. But I wasn’t. He was just abusing me. He had total mind control over me. He didn’t have to get physical with me; he just knew where to hit me where it hurts emotionally.
    We finally got caught in the act, and I was very happy because I wanted it to stop. I think the directors were worried that they could get sued because they kept telling me it was consensual. It wasn’t consensual at all. But I just wanted it to end. I wanted them to stop talking about it, so I agreed.
    Afterward, that guy told everybody on campus about us, and they all thought I was this big old homo. Other kids tried to have sex with me. Other kids wanted to abuse me. I was so confused. I was mad at myself, slow because of the medication, and I didn’t know what to do.

    When Mariah turned fourteen, she was still a resident at MercyFirst. She was attending summer school and had begun a