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Tradition
I stood straighter as the olive station wagon pulled up to the airport, my chest binder holding my anxiety tight against me. I'd spent an hour getting dressed. Levis, loose enough to cover any curves. My belt buckle almost suggestively large. I was sure my mom would think it obscene. My boots, a heavy armour holding me firm to the ground. My white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, showing off the effects of six months worth of workouts and testosterone. I liked the effect; I looked strong and solid. Not like I felt.
Dad was first out of the car, trying to help with my bags, but I pulled opened the rear passenger side door and bundled them in before he could object.
We went to Denny's, as we used to do whenever a relative had visited. Only now I was the visitor; a stranger they'd known all their lives. I ordered a hamburger hoping the familiarity of it would set them at ease, but fearful that I'd be setting precedence. The last thing I wanted was to fall back into all the traditional little patterns. They'd dug their way into my mind like a cavity for the past seventeen years. It starts with a hamburger, it ends in a dress.
Mom asked how school was going. We've always done it this way; never direct challenges, only oblique jabs. How were my classes? My grades? Dorm life? But I new what she really meant: How long? How much? How serious? How far? I answered in monosyllables that said more in silence than in content.
At home, standing in my old room, I wondered how much would have to change before I could feel like myself in this house, with these people. A shadow at the door, announced Dad's presence. I felt my stomach clench. It's going to be one of those talks, where he tells me I'm upsetting my mother, disappointing the family. I stiffen, pulling myself up so that I'm almost as tall as he is.
"You need to shave," he says, eyes averted.
I marvel at how much meaning can be held in a single word, like need. Yes, in the straightforward sense, I need to shave. I'd done it on purpose, of course, so they could see the evidence of my masculinity written on my body. My chin was so bristly now that it was beginning to itch. But when Dad speaks, what I hear is "We need you to shave." So they won't have to see. So they can pretend nothing's changed. So mom won't be upset.
I'm rehearsing my objections when he sets the box down on my dresser. I recognize its chipped green paint at once: my grampa's razor, an heirloom, bought in Germany, passed down from a man I've never met, but about whom I've heard all my life. Sailor, brawler, father, engineer. A man who once walked for three miles to the medical tent with a bullet in his gut, and lived to joke about it.
I ran my hand over the box and lifted the lid, as I'd done secretly so many times as a kid. Stainless steel double-sided blades, the kind men used to dispose of inside hotel room walls. Real wrist-cutters - not those plastic safety razors they sell at the drugstore. A badger hair shaving brush, a remnant of the days before shaving cream and caring about endangered species. I'd watched dad use it for close on two decades.
He tapped the box. "It's yours if you want it," he said. "You can still find blades for it if you look hard enough."
"I usually use an electric," I raised my chin, challenging, but inside, I wasn't so sure I was reading him right anymore.
Dad gruted. "You need a shave," he said. "And we've always done it this way." He put a heavy hand on my shoulder. "The men in our family, I mean."
