I wrote and revised A Boy Like Me during the first year of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program. Two years later, on September 4, 2014, the book was published by 215 Ink. During the summer of 2024, Mike Perkins approached me about doing a special 10th anniversary edition. Now editor-in-chief of Invader (formerly 215 Ink), Mike also edited the original manuscript of A Boy Like Me, along with my fellow Novel Incubator alum, Kelly Ford.
While I revisited the book and weighed the idea of a new edition, I looked back on my experiences in the year-long Novel Incubator course. Not only did the class help me become a stronger writer, it pushed me to grow in many ways and become a better person. It’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, and I’m so grateful to have been a part of it.
Also as I reread the book, some doubts and concerns about doing an anniversary edition surfaced. To address them, I wrote this preface.
A Boy Like Me Revisited
For much of my life I’ve explored my own identity through fiction because that is the safest space I’ve ever known. I grew up in a small town in North Carolina. The kind of town where boys play football and girls try out for cheerleading or the tennis team. The kind of town where the words gay and lesbian were used as insults when I was a kid.
One day in my 9th grade biology class, a popular white boy said this about people who had AIDS, “Why don’t we just ship all the sick gays to an island and leave them there?!” Almost all of my classmates nodded their heads in agreement. In that moment I knew one thing for certain: I had to get the hell out of that small town in order to survive.
Thankfully, I got a scholarship to a theater conservatory in Chicago. While there, I came out as lesbian. I fell in love with girls instead of boys. Not having any other words in my vocabulary, lesbian it was. When I came out as a lesbian to my best friend from high school, she told me that she still loved me but “was sad she wouldn’t see me in heaven.” When I told a close college classmate, she told me that I “needed psychiatric help.”
I sought refuge in the lesbian bar scene in Chicago, but didn’t feel like I belonged, which made no sense to me at the time. Everyone was welcoming, but I felt like an imposter. Thankfully, I found a home in the local music scene that had launched the Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, Urge Overkill and Veruca Salt onto the national scene. I felt safe at places like Lounge Ax, Empty Bottle and the Fireside Bowl, where I worked.
Inspired, I began writing songs and performing them at open mics. During an open mic night at Morseland on Chicago’s north side, I met singer/songwriter Rose Polenzani. Rose and I dated briefly and during this time she told me the backstory of her song “Parhelion.” It was inspired by a story in the New Yorker about Brandon Teena. This was before the film Boys Don’t Cry. Brandon’s story was the first transgender male narrative that I had heard.
Soon I began asking myself if I was a trans boy, but I kept the question to myself, and explored it through fiction. I wrote Flutter, about a girl who shapeshifts into a boy to get her dream girl because her dream girl is straight. First published by 215 Ink and later by Dark Horse, Flutter explores how girls are treated differently than boys. I’m very proud of Flutter, but I needed to write something that directly addressed the questions I was asking myself. A Boy Like Me was born.
To develop Peyton and write from his POV, I used the binary southern male lens that surrounded me as a kid. I gave him the things I was exposed to at a young age such as BB guns and a whole lotta Led Zeppelin. While in high school, Peyton works a part time job to help pay his mother’s utility bills like I did. A reader once commented that it’s not believable that a teenager would pay their parents’ bills. It shouldn’t happen, but it did to me.
Even though Peyton has a few of my life experiences, I kept revising and fleshing him out until he became separate from me. Peyton’s interactions with Tara helped him figure out and accept who he is. My interactions after I published A Boy Like Me helped me figure out and accept who I am.
In May 2015, I was invited to be on a panel to discuss A Boy Like Me and Flutter at the Queers & Comics conference in NYC. Before the panel started, the moderator asked all of the panelists for their preferred pronouns. It was the first time anyone had asked me. I nervously rattled off, “she, her, hers.” In my head I shouted, “What?! Don’t I look female?! Why are you asking me that question?!” Outwardly, I remained calm, but internally an earthquake began.
A month later I returned to NYC as a special guest for the first Flame Con. That year it was held at Grand Prospect Hall in Brooklyn. Flame Con is an amazing safe space created by the wonderful family that is Geeks OUT. I returned to exhibit at it every year through 2019, watching it grow from a one day convention to two days, and moving from Brooklyn to the Sheraton on 55th Street in Times Square. Being a part of Flame Con each year, I started hearing the terms non-binary and cisgender. At the Flame Con registration tables there were stickers with pronouns: He/Him/His, She/Her/Hers, They/Them/Theirs, and Just Ask. In 2019, while exhibiting at Flame Con, I grabbed a They/Them/Theirs sticker. Two years later, I pulled it out of the drawer at home when I came out as non-binary.
To prepare this special anniversary edition, I re-read A Boy Like Me for the first time in years. While reading it, I realized that a lot has changed over the last decade, including me. There are words and phrases, even entire scenes that I would write differently today. For example, the hunting references wouldn’t be in the book most likely even though Peyton shares my discomfort with it. Re-reading the manuscript, I seriously considered changing the Marilyn Manson t-shirt that Peyton wears to another musical artist and having his mother be a fan of someone other than Michael Jackson. However, this is Peyton’s story as written a decade ago. After careful consideration, I’m leaving the references in the manuscript as they were in 2014.
In the decade since A Boy Like Me was published by 215 Ink, I’ve heard from some trans individuals that the book provided solace and support. I’ve also heard from readers who have never read a book with a trans character and now they want to read more – more books with trans characters and books by trans authors, fiction and non-fiction.
Thankfully, there are many more books about trans characters and by trans authors than there were in 2014. I’ve watched over the decade as more people have become mindful and supportive of trans issues and equality. However, along with broader acceptance and visibility, there’s also more hate and backlash than ever before, emboldened by Trump and a MAGA agenda that has decided to vilify transgender individuals. The hate and violence currently targeted at queer people, especially transgender individuals, made me hesitant to do this anniversary edition when Mike Perkins and I first discussed it. 215 Ink is now Invader Comics, and there are people on the extreme right who think that transgender and queer people are invading their spaces. Not wanting to make a terrible situation worse in any way, I talked it over with someone who had read A Boy Like Me at a time when the book really helped her come out as trans. She encouraged me to re-release the book because maybe it would help someone else.
The 10th anniversary edition of A Boy Like Me can be pre-ordered here. I will be donating my part of the profits (50%) to Unite Against Book Bans.
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