ABOUT HARLEY
pronouns. he/him age. twenty-three gender. genderqueer // trans occupation. bartender at the reef bar // freelance artist hometown. aurora bay languages. english // american sign language // some cantonese likes. comic books // cheerleading // coffee dislikes. mornings // cold weather // sickly sweet scents
BIO. (tw. audism/ableism, gender dysphoria, transphobia)
harley grew up in aurora bay with his parents and his older brother in the seabrook quarter. he was an active kid, involved with gymnastics and later cheerleading as well. he loved to swim and spent as much time as his parents would let him in the ocean.
although harley passed his hearing test as a baby, when he was in kindergarten he didn’t pass his screening at school. his parents took him to an audiologist and was diagnosed with mild hearing loss. a few months later, another test showed he was gradually losing his hearing.
he had been doodling for as long as he’d been able to hold a crayon. while he didn’t consciously feel drawn to art as a result of his impending deafness, it helped him cope greatly with losing one of his senses. from the time he was seven, he was rarely seen without a sketchbook and at least three graphite pencils on him. even when he went to gymnastics or the beach, he had them in his bag.
technically it was harley’s decision whether or not to get a cochlear implant. his parents never intentionally influenced him one way or another. but his doctors had advised his parents not to teach him sign language, insisting that without sign language he’d learn to read lips and would function much better around other hearing people. the problem was that harley never really picked up lip reading anyways, so his only option to communicate with people was to get the cochlear implant. at first he hated it. everyone sounded like donald duck and inanimate objects all sounded like those bad industrial rock songs his cousin liked. he slowly got used to it and appreciated being able to hear his friends and family again, but he remembered what things were supposed to sound like so he never found himself satisfied with the quality of audio that came from his implant.
at the same time, puberty was not doing harley a lot of favors. he never cared too much about his body growing up; he wore the most androgynous clothing his mom would let him and made a face but sucked it up whenever he had to wear a leotard for gymnastics or put on his cheerleading uniform. as he entered middle school and made the cheerleading squad, there was suddenly a lot more pressure to look more feminine and fit in. baggy tshirts were replaced by form fitting clothes, and his basketball shorts were regulated to nighttime wear in favor of skinny jeans and short skirts. after spending all of elementary school barely being able to communicate with the people around him, he wanted so badly to just fit in and feel like a ‘normal’ kid. he’d look at his own reflection and see a stereotypical teenage girl and while he could appreciate that she was beautiful, it felt like he was looking at someone else and not himself. He knew deep down that he wasn’t ‘her’, but he didn’t know what that meant or how to fix it.
after high school, harley moved to new york to pursue a degree in illustration. his childhood dream had been to write a comic book, but drawing the pictures that would appear in childrens books was the next best thing and a more realistic way to make a living. his brother had also decided to go to new york for college, so they were soon living together again. he got more involved in his school’s gender-sexuality alliance and soon learned about the transgender community. and suddenly a lot of things started to click.
as he was figuring out his gender, his brother was extremely supportive. and once he had worked through everything and decided he wanted to transition and start going by harley, his brother stood by him when he came out to their parents. but his parents’ reactions weren’t as warm. they still loved him - they made sure to tell him that - but they also insisted that this was just a phase and that maybe it wasn’t a good idea for him to attend school in new york city. considering they had been very accepting when he came out to them as bisexual (actually, pansexual, but he had told them he was ‘bi’ just because it was easier) a couple years before, this was not the reaction he had expected from them
during harley’s freshman year of college, he met another deaf student who introduced him to the local deaf community. he kept going to events and even dated one of the guys he saw at a lot of events, which required him to learn asl.
his plan after he graduated was to stay in new york and find work as an illustrator. but this turned out to be harder than he realized. he struggled to find good paying jobs, which meant he had to keep working as a bartender and just do art on the side. at the same time, he and his boyfriend broke up and his brother took a job in missouri. so harley decided to go back to aurora bay. he missed his hometown but he was so hesitant to return; he knew so many people in town but none of them knew this version of him.
harley decided not to move back in with his parents, so he’s living at the ocean crest apartments.
MISC INFO.
harley is fairly nocturnal. even in high school he stayed up way later than he should have. this goes hand in hand with his lorelai gilmore-esque addiction to coffee and his initial decision to become a bartender rather than a barista; he’d rather be going to bed at 5am and not waking up for work at 5am.
harley did cheerleading in college but now that he’s graduated it’s the first time in his life he’s not on some kind of sports team. instead he spends a lot of his time at the gym
he picked the name harley because he liked that it was both gender-neutral and alliterative with his last name. contrary to popular belief, he did not get the name from harley quinn
he prefers asl to spoken english, but he’s stronger in english. he can also read some basic chinese
his favorite medium for art is drawing, followed by painting
