an overdue reckoning with this queer body: part 1

or how watching women's college basketball is helping me heal

It’s 1981. I’m in first grade, standing on the dusty baseball diamond awaiting a kickball game. I’m wearing a coral romper with eyelet trim, bleached-white Keds, and a pair of matching coral and white barrettes with ribbons cascading into my blonde hair. My classmate, Ann Aglan, has changed out of her powder-blue, smock-necked dress into shorts and a t-shirt just for P.E. class, which is something we didn’t typically do in first grade. (Yes, I have an uncanny knack for remembering what people wore and when. Ask my friends.) Ann proceeds to dominate the kickball game. After the game, a boy teases her “boyish” P.E. outfit and adds an F to the front of her last name, transforming it into a clumsy-but-spiteful slur that Ann and I had to learn the meaning of from an older kid on the bus ride home that day. When I got home, I traded my lacy romper for my own shorts, t-shirt, and “Little Slugger” baseball cap to play alone in the yard.

a typical school clothes to play clothes transition

It’s 1989. I’m in ninth grade. I’ve sworn off competitive…