Watchers

Chapter 27: I love the smell of anarchy in the morning

Daniel was five years old the first time he realized that his body didn't match his mind, and that the rest of the world didn't see him the way he did.

It was no big revelation - no mental breakdown in front of a mirror or moment of clarity when gender stereotypes were wrongly applied to him. He was too young for all of that, and it turned out to be something much simpler.

He was holding his mom's hand as they walked into a crowded auditorium where his dad was giving his stump speech. Their job was to smile and wave, make Senator Moreland look like an upright family man, then exit stage right.

Only, Daniel's mom had dressed him that morning in a candy pink jumper and a shirt that was uncomfortable because of the ruffles on the sleeves and the collar. He'd been fidgeting with it all the way to the auditorium and she snapped at him while they were waiting in the wings.

"Will you quit fussing?" she said, swatting his hand away. "All the other little girls would be happy to have an expensive dress like that."

He opened his mouth to explain that he was, in fact, not a little girl, but before he could find a way to articulate the problem, the crowd began cheering and his father took his other hand and led Daniel and his mom onto the stage - a perfect family man with a cute little daughter and a pretty wife.

It wasn't until puberty that Daniel went from tomboy to trans, and with every change of his body, the dysphoria increased. He became more and more uncomfortable in his own skin. He didn't belong in a body that was developing womanly curves and soft features, and he became desperate to undress from it just like he wanted to tear at the scratchy, frivolous ruffles of his childhood wardrobe.

By the time he got to high school, Daniel knew that he wanted to medically transition. He also knew that it was a prohibitively expensive process and that only a very few privileged individuals could afford it.

Lucky for him, his father was a senator.

Unlucky for him, Senator Moreland was courting a constituency that would not take kindly to such a flagrant show of wealth. At least, that's how his father was convinced that they would see Daniel's transition.

His father spent years bribing Daniel with testosterone shots in exchange for his support on the campaign trail. He was permitted to start hormone therapy and be himself in private as long as he turned into Senator Moreland's supportive daughter during public appearances.

But the older Daniel got, the more he started listening to his father's message, and he realized that he didn't agree. His dad meant well, but he was trapped in the old ways - rigidly so ever since the Capitol Hill Massacre.

So with every testosterone shot that Daniel took, he knew that he was trading his principles for a body that felt like it belonged to him.

Daniel was twenty years old when his father finally permitted him to get the gender confirmation surgery he needed.

It was yet another compromise - after he was healed, Daniel would join his father on the campaign trail as his manager, helping Senator Moreland be appealing to new-wave constituents. But after spending his whole life in scratchy dresses that made his skin crawl, Daniel had no choice but to agree.

The surgeries were hard to get through, both because of the physical toll they took during recovery and because the hospital staff all looked down their noses at Daniel. He hadn't been expecting that, but a patient getting a very expensive elective procedure while most of the country was looking for their next meal was a spectacle to behold.

Daniel understood it - he even felt guilty for it - but they didn't know what it was like to spend the first two decades of their lives looking in a mirror and wondering who was looking back at them.

The surgeries were painful and the recovery wasn't much better. The nurses gave Daniel a morphine drip, and when he went home, there was a bottle of oxycodone waiting for him on the bathroom counter. He took the pills and didn't give it much thought as one prescription refill gave way to another, and another, and he went back to his life - now working full-time for his father.

The first time Daniel noticed that he'd become dependent on the pills was on the campaign trail. He had his bottle of pills with him as always, ready for the first twinge of pain from his healing scars, but he ran out of oxycodone before they got back to Washington.

Daniel thought it would be okay - it was several months after the surgery and the pain should have been subsiding. He sent one of his father's aides to a drug store for Tylenol and he had to take ten of them before they even began to dull the pain. He tried to sleep it off, but after tossing and turning for several hours and drenching his sheets with sweat, he gave up and called his doctor to have an emergency prescription sent to the local pharmacy.

It was a problem - obviously - but Daniel was so busy with his father's campaign, there was no time to go through opiate withdrawal. He just kept taking the pills and telling himself he'd deal with it when they got home.

Their falling out came first.

When Daniel left the campaign trail, he knew it marked an end to not only his relationship with his father, but also his hormone treatments and his access to oxycodone. The shock of being disowned dulled both of these realizations at first, and then the heroin took over that role.

It became a vicious cycle, like drugs always do. The longer he stayed clean, the more he was forced to think about the mess he'd made of his life, cut off from his family and without access to testosterone - something the streets couldn't provide.

His body was beginning to revert to the state he'd tried so hard to escape. Every time Daniel caught his reflection in a window or a puddle in the street, it reminded him that he'd done all of this for nothing and it made him want the junk even more.