Self-Made Man
- Granta 129: Fate
Waking up with a headache – kinda sucks.
Waking up with a flat chest – priceless.
Liam Kai, eighteen years old and just graduated from high school in a town near Ann Arbor, Michigan, tweeted these words on 18 June 2014. It was nine days after his breast surgery and the day after he had had the dressings and drains removed. On the same day he also posted a video on Instagram in which we watch the doctor unwrapping his bandages: Liam looks down over his newly boyish chest and whoops, ‘Dude!’ In a few weeks he will begin injecting the testosterone that will – finally – vault him out of the purgatory of an extended androgynous childhood into the manhood of body hair and a deep voice.