Pageboy: A Memoir

At the age of 11, Page started to feel that there was a shift in how he was perceived, “a shift from boy to girl without [his] consent” (89). His relationship with Linda deteriorated further; she was increasingly cruel and hostile toward him, and he started to dread the weeks that he had to spend at his father’s house. Dennis, Linda, and Page’s stepsiblings all teased Page together, using the nickname “Skid-mark,” coined by Linda, to ridicule him. Dennis insisted that it was just a joke, but Page stopped telling Dennis or Linda when he was hurt or upset to avoid their scorn.

Once, in the late 1990s, Page fell while roller skating and injured himself so badly that when he finally managed to crawl home, he found his underwear soaked in blood. At first, when he told Linda, she dismissed him. Finally, when he showed her his blood-soaked underwear, she took him to the hospital. Page learned that he “[tore] something” (96) inside, though the tear was not big enough to require stitches.

Later in life, Page blamed some of his sexual difficulties with men on this injury. He visited a gynecologist to see if this was the problem but was told that there was “nothing wrong with [his] vagina.