PANTS

by: gabby struna

"the pants you wear define you."

Told from a young age, not to skimp out on the girls’ section, as I was too quick to pick up options from the boys’ section. Growing up wearing Elmo pajama pants with a button on the fly should have been my mom’s first sign. Knowing quite where things shifted as a kid is the first step to understanding your identity because most of my childhood was a front, a mask, a disguise. I’m not saying I grew up knowing I wasn’t a girl or anything, but something wasn’t quite right. I was a tomboy. I grew up on the soccer field with rough play, being told to have a thicker skin. But my skin was covered in princess attire and pink frills. I craved the fall during soccer, blood, and dirt on my knees, anything to break the skin of the person I knew I’d never be, the skin of the person who is instinctively miserable. Grass stains on my shorts made me feel something.

As I search for a solution to my seemingly never-ending predicament, I leave with a sense of denial by all means. Being raised on a catholic regimen, my knees began to meet the pews more than they met the grass on the soccer field. The signs were there. The church bells rang distinctively like the carabiner hooked on the belt loop of my pants on a daily basis. A chosen stereotype coated with scratches from key rings. The silver, worn-down carabiner, however, became a distinctive feature about me to anyone who got to know me, the real me. They will hear me from a mile away as the keys to many aspects of my life clink and jingle, and scream as I walk, a permanent structure on my pants tying me to the inevitable distraction that has taken over my very vision. The carabiner creates a sense of comfort to me, in ways I can’t quite explain, though, through these keys, they will speak for me...

I grew up with my dad always nearby. My dad was a better friend than those I had swapped secrets with, though, not the secrets they wanted to hear. My dad taught me how to kick a soccer ball, how to accurately assemble a train set, and how to change the oil in his truck by the age of 10. Where my dad did anything, there I was holding the screwdriver next to him. So, I was never into painting nails or playing with Barbies, so what? I was interested in the nitty gritty, and it wasn’t until I turned 17 that I realized that was for a reason. I was bound to this lifestyle, whereas my mother says I chose it. Not necessarily the truth when I spent my childhood picking out boys to have crushes on so I could be included at the lunch table. That is what falsified love for me so early on. I didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like, I was a cascade of plastic dolls and imitating TV characters—anything to not say those damn words.But I think growing up a girl with a knack for everything the boys were doing set the road down with metal locks and chains for me. I grew up with a boy best friend, naturally, everyone thought we were going to get married one day; I think he is gay now. We bonded over my teaching him how to act girly, and him teaching me all about trucks and construction. It was the kind of thing you would think would last forever; I haven’t spoken to him in 9 years.Unfortunately, my dad and this kid, Andrew, were the only sources of masculinity I got growing up; however, I took what I could grasp between my fingers. I picked up on wearing a backwards hat when it’s windy out, that manspreading was more comfortable than crossed legs, and that jeans are always a reliable fashion choice. I didn’t know the pants I wore defined me, they do, I’d say, arguably more than shirts do. But that may be too controversial.

Discovering my masculine energy as opposed to my femininity that clawed up my back and left scars aside my freckles, promoted a lot of back-seat car thinking about exactly where my life had changed. With age, I experience more gut-wrenching nostalgia, and as unhealthy as that seems, it allows me to see and feel, I mean really feel, that I've made it this far, that those memories were real, funnily enough. I remember the first person I told, April 7th, five years ago. That same person happened to ruin my life from that point forward. Crushes are a really difficult thing to consider tangible, at least for anyone with a beating heart. My God, I was so in love, I didn't know what to do with myself. All over someone who didn't even give me the time of day, unless I was speaking about my best friend. Two years went by, and they were still together, hopelessly devoted, I guess.I still listen to the songs she showed me, maybe it's a nostalgia thing. People have a funny way of doing that--leaving scraps of themselves, dragging along my daily routines, even if it is from the person I hate. Honestly, I think I deserve to put this experience on my resume simply because I survived. Though, no one believed I would, not even myself, I survived and went on to have other crushes. Even some relationships. Relationships, nonetheless, that carved my being from the inside out, and scraped me for all I am.None of that really mattered once I inevitably grew up, I mean really grew up, or grew from certain things, maybe, and met the one person who has continuously treated me, in other words, like a human being. A burning flame. I think we were secretly always meant to find each other, living on opposite sides of the Long Island Sound, and growing up, we always thought there was something, someone, on the other side waiting for us. What a beautiful analogy.Eighteen years later, we found each other. I sauté the onions in a cast-iron pan while music plays loudly in the background, though it sounds muffled, as if from a movie scene. We both like classic rock. We like everything the same, and we bicker about the stuff we disagree on, I guess like an old married couple. Fingers intertwine with my hair, and we danced, hands interlocked, like crazy to the music, like it was just us in the world—we’ve all had that experience, right? That’s what it’s all about. Anyways, the onions burned, and I didn’t even care. Love finds its way into every open door.

I realized that with each passing year, as my style changes and morphs with the skin that stretches on my body, I have never felt more molded into my skin, yet so isolated from my shedding of years past, layers lost. Those fragments of skin on the floor. I think I had to figure it out before most people in my life, and that will come back to haunt you. Being the first in a sea of unfamiliarity and people keeping you at arm’s length just to save face was a reality I didn’t know I would have to be faced with. It wasn’t until the second half of grade 9, deciding skinny jeans weren’t comfortable like, at all, but most importantly, they made me look like a copy of the girls who obsessed over boys who dated their best friend. That was the last thing I could have wanted.Who would have thought spending months in isolation during the pandemic could be beneficial for a girl trying to discover her true self? Not me, but I digress, I fell victim to the massacre of 2020— I shed the skin I’ve been trapped in since the day I entered this heteronormative world. There’s nothing a combination of a disheveled girl, a Call Me by Your Name fixation, and a global pandemic can’t fix. Soul-searching for my masculinity felt wrong because everyone I was surrounded by was honing their femininity around the time I was completely questioning mine. Maybe all except my friend Syd.

By the age of nineteen, I had seemingly surpassed almost every stereotype that I received through word of mouth in the 8th grade. Which, to my twelve-year-old self, was considered an insult. But now I consider it almost as if it’s a challenge? Instead of saying, “F *** you,” I begin with the soft sounds of, “Yeah, you got me there, and what about it?” I guess it’s all about perspective. I wish I could have told that to little David in the freshman year science class when I got called a slur for simply the color of my hair, I didn’t know that determined everything I am worth, but if David says it does, then I better believe it.
There’s a developmental stage for most humans where you realize the universal connection we have all had to these stereotypes. Some do everything in their power to prevent these stereotypes from being cast on them, while others go out of their way to make sure it is known. You see, I grew up with a transparency in the realm of stereotypes; I could never tell them apart or whether it was a compliment or not.When I was thirteen, I was on the landline with my best friend, we would call every night like clockwork. This night we were up playing video games together, a solidified bond, one I never worried about ruining. There was a distinction of what seemed like comfortable silence one particular night, she broke the silence and asked me, "Do you ever think girls are pretty?" I thought about it for a second, "Well, yeah, I think girls are pretty." I felt sweat trickle down the back of my neck. "Sometimes I just wish I looked like they did, those are the ones who always get the boys." She said. I paused, no one gets it. "Oh yeah, me too."Looking back at those years, I had wished I had a magic eight ball to tell me, "gabby, you do not like him." Or that maybe the rumors about me in eighth grade weren't completely untrue. Not that I would have even begun to let myself believe those in the first place. Stereotypes have completely and utterly infiltrated my life like an alien spaceship looking for its homeland, I lack existence behind the standards set out for me once I declared that label. I guess that's my fault.

An emotionless pit full of The Clash, rainy summer evenings, and the smell of pine trees; was on a repeating track since the 5th grade. A shiv twisting deeper into my intestines, making me flinch sporadically. Memories that are lodged into my brain, itching, clawing their way to the creation of my identity. I can’t change anything anymore. Brainwashed to remember all of those days wasted just for a person, a laugh, a love—but that is the stereotype I am forced to represent like an exposed tattoo that a sleeve nor cuff could cover, right?As I contemplate the righteous development of the entrapped, “ill” mind that I’ve been secluded to, I see a young girl underneath, unable to subject herself to baby dolls and the occasional ponies of all different pastel colors. My heart breaks. Why did I feel so guilty? Why do I feel so guilty?I’ve gone through many pants in my life. This is not near the end. I contextualize everything I come across, people, places, things, even keys. I’m known for this, maybe that is all I’ll ever be. But who would want to be anything else?