When I returned to Boston from Germany, I cut my hair short, first by myself, and then when I had botched it enough, again by a hairdresser.

With short hair, I see both myself at fifteen and my father, and I can't quite square either of them. I slick it back and feel only grease.

A few summers ago, I sat on the bathroom floor and trimmed my leg hair with craft scissors. An hour of trimming, longer than it would have taken to shave, trying to avoid patchiness. Just enough so people wouldn't be able to tell I had hair on my legs, but close up I still could.

I used to feel insecure about the strip of hair on the back of my neck too, but that's gotten better with age.

One time in August, back when me and my friends were in the habit of trimming each other's hair on the front porch, one of them stopped the other from buzzing the strip off so they could do it themselves.

And I let them, even though I haven't cared about the back of my neck since I was fifteen. Later at home they buzzed my neck as I watched in the bathroom mirror, and I wondered what it would be like to be taught how to shave.

I've been wearing my hair back recently. It's not used to laying that way so instead it sticks straight up, and I end each day with a hat on. I've started washing my hair every other day, I'm greasier than ever, an unintended side effect.

The August I turned eighteen I decided I was tired of looking "butch", and it was about time I grew out my short hair, so I spent my first semester of undergrad with a tiny, ugly squirt of a bun on the top of my head, the rest of my hair barely past my ears.

I had started going by my full first name again by that point, but I still referred to my hair as my "man-bun".

I again remind myself of the definition of habit. I am again surprised that when I comb my hair, my hair is less greasy.

More often than not I watch men on the train.

Or at least, who could be men. I don't want to get into the habit of assuming, but if I assume shorthand for myself I wonder if it's okay to do the same for others.

I wear the same silver hoops every day, nearly always the same jeans. I haven't taken off my chain necklace for two and a half years. I sleep in my jewelry, I sleep shirtless only partially out of necessity. In the morning, the heat kicks on too strong, and I feel it from the gap between the bed and the wall. I dangle my fingers in between and try not to touch the soft spot.

If I was braver I would move myself, instead I mentally count all the ways we're the same. This one has brown hair, this one wears glasses, this one is carrying a heavy bag. It looks heavy. It looks like our prescriptions are the same, if I can judge by the thickness of the glass. If I can judge from this far away.

My eyes aren't that good, and it's been a while since I went to the eye doctor. If I was braver I would not look in the first place.

The morning of my first doctor's appointment, I let myself take my time while getting dressed. I stuck a pad on the inside of my boxer briefs and folded my glasses wipe in my front jeans pocket. I debated whether a camo-print hat or a Boston Red Sox hat would be more appropriate to wear.

It was only after I wrote it and I shared it that I thought to be embarrassed about it.

I understand that crying is not a normal response to seeing another man with pierced ears.

Thirty is my goal, if I can say I have goals.

I'm asked a lot what my goals are, and every time it feels like I'm being asked how many times I shit in a day, I'd rather not talk about it in polite company, or ever.

Sometimes I walk with my hands in my front jeans pockets just to show off.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier to just drop it all, go back to how it used to be, like I did the first time around.

On the train ride home, I tried not to watch two guys flirt. One leaned his belly on the other. Hooked on a belt loop. I watched the window instead, until I realized I could see their reflection there too.

My dad asks me if I've considered going to the wig store and getting a stick-on beard, maybe a goatee. Walk around for a week with it on and see how I feel.

I ask him what wig store would sell stick-on beards. A costume store? Is he thinking of Sally's Beauty Supply next to the old health food store back home in Michigan? My chin feels itchy just thinking of it.

He says I should just try it, just to be sure I like it, to take my time.

I'm good at the some-what-lies. Lies by omission, anxiously often, starting a sentence without knowing the end of it. Accidentally lying.

I once told my mom I never considered top surgery, and I told all my friends I don't think in full sentences.

I have let too much time go by.

In the restroom I try to stuff the ends of my short hair up into my hat. There are three of us at the sinks, trading turns in front of the full-length mirror. I ask one of the strangers if it looks weird, if my hair looks natural, and she says it looks good to me, and it occurs to me that I'll miss this when I inevitably stop using the women's room.

I think I'll enjoy shaving. I'm already planning for the day I'll ask for an electric clipper recommendation. I think my friends are starting to catch on that when I'm joking, I'm not. I thought I felt it in my chest yesterday, they say I peak at 11 in the morning. I want to go to bed early so I can start again tomorrow. I want to pull out the big gun.

And do we always need to talk by the water?

This time I spoke directly into the wind, and was grateful to only catch every other word.

I remember many years ago, sitting on the dock with my mother as I explained to her that I date men now along with women. I hadn't planned on that one. We joked that I went about everything backwards, experimenting with boys in college, and the joke only gets better with age.

If I frame it right, I'm already there. I sit on the back porch with my little brother and we smoke and argue, and when he forgets his sweatpants at my place they fit me perfectly.

When I last called my mom, she repeated my name in every sentence, almost as if she was making a point. She calls me McCall on the phone, but calls for Meg across the house.

On the boat he rolls cigarettes as I try to wipe down my hands. Both of our knees are orange from sanding down mahogany rails. I don't know if there's ever a perfect fit, I tell him, and I'm okay with it not fitting. And so he introduces me as his sister to the Captain, his boss, my boss for the day, and I shake his hand as hard as I can.

In Berlin I didn't leave the apartment as much as I should have. I pretended that it was mine, it was close enough, balcony full of dead leaves and sticky cigarette ash. A drying rack full of black t-shirts. I considered for neither the first nor the last time that I should learn an instrument. I ran up data bills watching YouTube, I ordered takeaway and got crumbs on a couch that wasn't mine, I wrote almost nothing. I didn't know how to dress myself, buy train tickets for myself, write for only myself.

Back in a diner in Boston, a friend tells me I should try tinting my upper lip hair to make a mustache, like how people tint their eyebrows or eyelashes.

Once when I was fifteen, I combed my leg hair with mascara. Too clumpy to actually look like anything, sort of a joke, sort of not.

I consider it long enough to find the mental image hilarious, and tempting.

On sunny days I sit on a bench by Charles River for lunch, crossing through MIT campus in a hoodie and blue tape on my jeans, trying on my tough guy face.

Yesterday I cried imagining being my brother's best man at his wedding. Today I watched from the bench as a toddler tried to crawl in-between the bars, into the Charles. I watched as the father scooped him up, and I considered shouting that I think I could be a good father too.

It occurs to me that I'm well suited for this. All I do is wait, I am more patient than I say I am, I am watching the hair grow on my knuckles.

I want hair on my stomach, I want to cry on the train. I want a pickup truck and to sit in my boxers in peace.

I don't think I'm arrogant, but I do think I have an ego the size of a house. I think I've got the temperament of a man in his late twenties who thinks he's making the most important work of his life. He's got it figured out. He knows more about everything than anyone there ever was. He's not afraid to pull out the big guns.

I decided I no longer need directions, even in a new neighborhood, even when I get off the train two stops early to walk along the river.

I see the river every morning and every evening from the train, but it's not actually parallel to the tracks, it eventually runs south as my train runs west. Every morning I walk through the high school campus to get to my train station, right as school is starting. I walk behind teenagers, I try to walk around teenagers, because if I walk too close I start to get self-conscious that I look like a teenager too.

I wonder if I should start wearing a tie. Students don't wear ties. I wonder if men leave the house with wet hair in the morning, if I can ride the train with wet hair, if I should blow dry my hair.

The morning after my brother stayed the night on my new couch we walked to the train station together. He asked if I noticed anything different. The tops of my feet are actually hairier, I told him. No, if I've been thinking any differently, he said.

Truthfully, very little has changed. I don't answer texts, I don't look at directions. I get defensive. I stop at traffic lights when walking, even in Boston. I download and delete dating apps every few weeks, I leave girls on read. I fantasize about boys. I crash every day at four o'clock. I walk without looking people in the eye, down. I walk fast, preemptively defensive, I am busy, I am preoccupied, I am practicing my words, I am trying my best to read out loud, sound it all out, let myself hear it, think it, repeat it.

I'm okay until the crickets stop chirping. Tomorrow I will wear the same pair of jeans, I'm tired of decisions. Tomorrow I will take my time, I am well suited for this, I will walk for as long as I have to.