Of/By LB Lee
Cover: a perplexed LB in a hoodie, holding up a sign with a male sign, a female sign, and a question mark.
A child with long hair, wearing a turtleneck, a pink dress, a pink heart necklace, and pink heart sticker earrings beams out of the panel. Every i in her speech bubble is dotted with a heart. "I'm a girl!" She says. "Girl girl girl! I like pink, and hearts,* and Care Bears!"
Footnote: We still like pink and hearts.
A child wearing skorts (with a footnote that nobody does anymore) stands reading a copy of the BFG by Roald Dahl. An arrow points to the book with the note, "we still love this book." Entranced, the child says, "Wow! Girls don't have to like pink and make-up! I can be different! No way!"
The child is noticeably older, wearing a Nature Camp T-shirt. Looking cheerful, she says, "I'm growing up to be 6'11, flat-chested, and I won't hit puberty till I'm sixteen. If I think hard enough, it's so!" Then, "...what do you mean, that's weird?"
The child's hair is shoulder-length. She is wearing overalls, crying, dramatically holding hands up to the heavens. "Mother Nature, why have you betrayed me? Did I not think hard enough?" Arrows point with the following notes: "5'0," "11 years old, full-throttle puberty," and "forced into bra after many family fights."
The child (teenager now) has their hair pulled back in a long ponytail and is wearing a purple sweatshirt, shrugging apathetically. "I'm not a boy OR a girl," they say. "I'm an androgyne. Also known as: a freak." An arrow notes, "tells no one ever."
The teenager's hair is too short to be pulled back now. They're still in sweats, arms crossed. They look depressed. "I don't even know what I am anymore," they say. "All I know is that it hurts." An arrow notes that they have started binding their chest with pantyhose.
LB is an adult now, hair cropped pixie short. They're smiling and flexing proudly, announcing, "Queer, trans, multi, PROUD!"
12/18/2010. THE END