I
Muddy knees and football boots,
despairing parents for a child who refuses
to wear dresses, Arsenal sweatbands
wrapped around wrists that will one day
wear stripes of a different kind, hair uncut
and unkempt, strangers assume you’re a
boy and this pleases you no end, you call
yourself Jimmy or Spike or something, and
practice your brand new signature.

Here endeth the first gender.

II
You smell like teen spirit with unwashed
black jeans and long baggy jumpers pulled
down to knees and stretched over wrists
where thumbs poke through, you’d cover
your face in a balaclava if you could, and
you listen to songs about loving girls and
never once ask yourself why you always
identify with the man despite being only
fourteen.

Here endeth the second gender.

III
Grandad shirts and dress suit trousers with
buttons for braces to keep them held up
with and oversized jackets that double as
coats shrouded with scarfs and fingerless
gloves and men’s thermal vests from M&S
- underwear the only thing you can afford
to buy new - you walk and talk like a
Victorian dandy, a Fagin a pirate a
highwayman, you can barely afford food
but at least you look good, as a ragamuff-
diver, a charity shop gentleman dyke.

Here endeth the third gender.

IV
Disco napped 1970s flares, your mum’s
Adidas joggers with the go faster stripe
that lost their elastic that one time you
washed them, now barely holding up over
your jutting hips, lips shiny with the herbal
burn of hash-fags-smoke, the sting of
poppers brings tears to your eyes. More
Than A Woman is your calling card for
you’ve come to admit you’re a woman of
sorts, embracing your breasts now you’ve
finally found someone who knows how to
touch them, and your blossoming cunt
wants to fuck the world and everyone in it.

Here endeth the fourth gender.

V
At work, suited and booted with your
invisible panties, finally you can afford to
buy smart shirts and cufflinks, for the first
time in your life men are looking at you
and you surprise yourself because you
think you might like it. and fucking the
new boy just might be your new kink, and
in between you roam the streets looking
for trade, your girlfriend no longer enough
for you, her and that Gold Star brigade.

Here endeth the fifth gender.

VI
Decades later you’re back where you
started, boy? girl? who cares, for now
there are peers and queers and non-binary
spheres, recognition and representation
whilst bigots invent new forms of fascism
and declare the gender wars, some people
are trans get over it, but not you, still not
sure what you are, still that tomboy
playing with cars and climbing trees and
turning your head at all the pretty girlboy /
boygirls.

You can’t wait to see what comes next.

Gender Lessons