One of the Boys

It’s been a long time since I finished a book in a single day.

There are a few reasons for this. One being that, like a lot of adults, carving out the time to read, and especially a physical book, is less immediately appealing than the millions of digital options. The other is that the books I buy tend to be Books About Society, and those are a bit dense and can be offputting.

In saying that, fiction has never really been my literary genre. Every fiction section at the bookstores I go to feels like a madness rune. The history, philosophy, and criticism sections are straightforward. Fiction only stands out if it is from someone I know of or have followed in the past.

Enter, One of the Boys.

The debut novel by Victoria Zeller, a person whose social media I’ve followed mostly by and for sports related shitposting (especially about the Buffalo Bills, my NFL team), One of the Boys released in May 2025. The story follows Grace Woodhouse, a newly out and transitioning high school senior, as she navigates the pressures of being trans, the threads that connect the old life and the new, and being the kicker on her title-competing football team. I bought my digital copy yesterday through Bookshop.com while sitting in the hellscape that is Newark Airport at 7 a.m., and read it in chunks before and after my (delayed, fuck you Newark) flight, finishing it at around 1:30 in the morning.

Before I say anything else: One of the Boys is excellent, and you should read it. Spoilers for the book are ahead.

I wish I could have been Grace Woodhouse.

That was my overriding thought for most of the book. I don’t want to suffer the same things Grace does, the social and physical violence (not that anyone does, but you know what I mean). I wish I had the fortitude when I was seventeen to allow myself to go forward and live. To have that determination over myself before it was beaten back by repression and paralyzed indecision. People like me have probably dealt with the emotions of not recognizing themselves or transitioning sooner. It’s a bad idea to dwell on that, but sometimes it can’t be helped.

I have been Grace in other ways. Being the sole trans athlete on a team. Realizing the distance I felt between myself and what I saw in others, believing them to have some innate understanding of the world that was beyond me. Trying a family member’s clothing (in my case, it was my sister’s Disney princess dress. I was two, I hit my head on a chair while trying to do spins.) Having to Explain Gender to cis people. Seeing people accept you, but with the uncertainty of whether they do it out of sincerity or politeness. Bristling against the masculinity of boy’s sports while wanting to be loved by the thing that you love. Being hard on yourself because you feel like you should, before someone tells you how much skill and potential you have.

Not just themes, either. There were scenes that absolutely one-shotted me. Like this one (p.162), not just for the excerpt but the stilted coming-out conversation I’ve had so many times by now.

Part of why I think this book hit me so hard was the recent reflecting I’ve done on the time in my life that this book covers. I graduated high school in June 2020. What was supposed to be a big celebration was a drive-through. No prom, no equivalent of the state football championship (rugby nationals). I spent those months playing Wolfenstein and watching the SBNation Seattle Mariners documentary and trying desperately to beat back the idea that any of this was, or ever could be, normal.

Last week, some former classmates put together a five-year reunion. I had plans to hang out with other high school friends, who I’ve thankfully kept in touch with, but the reunion was within walking distance and curiosity got the better of me.

I don’t know what I expected. People by and large hung out in the same groups I saw them in five years ago. The conversations were all the same. How are you, what do you do now, oh that’s so cool here’s this thing I know that’s kind of similar, et cetera. Some people looked different, but nothing really felt like it changed.

A few of my friends were there, ones who knew I was trans, and I latched onto them like a child. I stood on the edges of their conversations, because I didn’t want to introduce my clocky, egg-just-out-of-the-shell self to anyone else. I left after a while, to go get hammered in my friend’s basement like old times and, like old times in that exact basement, see if this time would be different, that I could finally shed the dead skin that covered me. Like old times, I did not. At least I had fun.

Just before my senior year of high school, I confided in a friend that I wanted to try women’s clothing. She was supportive, but nothing ever came of it. It would take me another two years to finally muster the courage to order a dress, makeup, and pink sneakers. I nearly cried when my order got partially lost. When I finally put it on, in my Covid-era dorm, I dreaded the mirror, and dissociated when I finally saw myself. Like Grace, I didn’t believe I could change myself, the things I realized I hated, so I wanted to change the things around me. Throw my phone, break the mirror, do something that would allow me to avoid the confrontation. It took me another three years to admit to my friends in college, all of whom are trans themselves, what they already knew. I was so embarrassed that I had them guess my name letter by letter on a whiteboard like it was fucking Wheel of Fortune. Another year to finally start HRT. Another few months to start to let myself feel. Multiple botched or short-lived coming out attempts online throughout all of this. I still have so long to go, and what hit me about One of the Boys was how much of it could have been there for me if I. I don’t know.

I caught myself zoning out writing that sentence.

Grace gets her friends together late at night and has them dye her hair pink to get one over on a transphobic teammate. I spend a year and a half asking people if I should dye my hair and did nothing about it. I don’t do makeup every day and try like she does. I show up to class in soccer shirts and plain black pants. There’s no right way or no one way to be trans, and I wouldn’t keep adding to my worryingly large shirt collection if I didn’t like doing it, but I wish I believed in the concept of myself enough to try. I’ve never even done makeup, save for a few botched attempts at eyeliner and doing my nails when I muster the executive function for it.

I cant figure out a way to continue or wrap this piece, and I like to write in one shot, so here goes nothing. I want to use this energy I feel from the book to make myself be the person I want to, could have, been. I cannot be seventeen again. I cannot reappear at any of the points in my life where self-actualization might have been possible and make the decision over again. Not when I was a toddler in the princess dress, not when I was an angry thirteen year old who had just left all-boys school (only somewhat for things relating to my identity), not when I was seventeen, not when I was nineteen, not six months ago, not yesterday.

Tomorrow, though, if I believe in myself, I can.

GO. GO NOW.

If you are that person reading this, you know who are are. Yes the irony was not lost on me about the main character being named Grace.