full name. harley hua faceclaim. chella man gender. transmasc nonbinary (he/they) birthday. may 27, 2000 (24 years old) birthplace. alexandria, virginia time in town. 2003-2018, most summers between 2018-2021, again since 2024 living situation. one bedroom apartment above great wall occupations. docent at heyes park house & museum, freelance artist, masters student in art history at heywood university family. ethan (older brother), parents
bio triggers. audism/ableism, gender dysphoria
Harley was born in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside of Washington DC. His parents had been struggling to give birth for years, and adopted their oldest child. Shortly after the adoption was finalized, they were pleasantly surprised to find out that they were going to have a biological child as well. Despite a difficult and complicated pregnancy, Harley was born as a seemingly healthy baby girl. They were only three when the family relocated to New Bellevoux, LA. Their only esarly memories of Alexandria are a few brief glimpses of the family’s apartment. Growing up, New Bellevoux was the only place they had ever called ‘home’.
Harley’s first hearing test was when he was five years old. It was a routine test that every kid in his class received, along with a vision test. Harley’s vision came back without any cause for concern, but he soon found out that he had failed his hearing test. This surprised not only Harley, but his parents as well. A follow up test with a licensed audiologist confirmed the original findings, and gave a clearer idea of where his hearing loss was at. Mild hearing loss in the upper registers. At first, there was nothing to be concerned about. He could understand spoken language perfectly fine, with no major difference from his peers with perfect hearing, so the only thing that was done was a follow up appointment in a few months to make sure his hearing wasn’t deteriorating. A few months later, in the same audiologist office, their parents found out that his most recent test had come back showing greater hearing loss. Nobody knew what would happen in the future, but all signs pointed to him becoming completely deaf before reaching adulthood.
Their home was a bilingual environment, with both English and French commonly spoken with sprinklings of Cantonese as well. Throwing in a fourth language would only confuse everyone, the audiologist told them. With Harley not being born deaf, he had a similar grasp of oral language to his hearing peers, and their audiologist also worried that he’d be less motivated to speak, and would lose the clarity of his spoken words if he had the option to sign. His family was pushed towards hearing aids and lipreading. Once hearing aids were no longer enough, they could start looking at cochlear implants.
Although Harley doesn’t dwell on it or talk about it much, this was a very difficult and scary time. They were losing one of their senses, and nobody could stop it or make it easier. He threw himself into gymnastics, which he had been involved with since moving to New Bellevoux. He loved challenging himself to be the best he could be. However, being in such a female dominated sport also highlighted a feeling that something was different about him. He brushed those feelings off, figuring he was just more of a tomboy than other girls in the sport and that his feelings of disconnect from his body were because of how he felt about his hearing loss.
The other thing they focused on was their art. Their first canvases were crayons and the white walls of their Alexandria apartment. They heard the words ‘security deposit’ in worried, frustrated tones many times before they ever understood what the phrase meant. Fortunately for their parents, they quickly moved onto graphite pencils and sketchbooks, and later canvas and paint. Once their hearing began to deteriorate, art became a very comfortable escape; it was a world where hearing meant nothing and they could draw the many feelings they didn’t have the words to talk about.
Before finishing middle school, Harley was profoundly deaf. Hearing aids had long stopped being a tool to help them understand spoken language, and their lipreading skills had not developed as strongly as their audiologist and parents had hoped for. With some accommodations, they managed in school and gymnastics. Their friends tried to be inclusive, utilizing notebooks and group text chats, but there was only so much they could realistically do and Harley often felt like they were trapped in a bubble watching the world around them. They became a quiet observer, hiding behind a sketchpad or a comic book as often as they could.
Cochlear implants were strongly suggested by Harley’s audiologist, but his parents left the choice up to him. Harley was twelve now, and they felt he was old enough to have the final say in these decisions. But without knowing ASL or anyone else who was deaf, the choice was obvious. Harley underwent cochlear implant surgery on his right side, soon followed by his left side. The adjustment was difficult. As isolating as the silence had been, he was used to it. He was hearing sounds he had completely forgotten about and found listening all the time to be overstimulating. But his audiologist pushed for him to wear the cochlear implants every waking moment, and it’s what his parents expected from him as well. Still, he didn’t regret his choice. For the first time in years, he could have conversations with his friends and listen to his teachers. His confidence grew, and as he got more accustomed to the way the world sounded through his artificial ears, he became much more outgoing.
In eighth grade, some of his friends convinced him to try out for cheerleading with them. While they didn’t make the team, Harley’s gymnastics background helped him pass auditions with flying colors. The girls on the squad were very quick to give Harley a makeover. He had always preferred basketball shorts and baggy tshirts. His mom refused to let him cut his long, curly hair so he instead pulled it back in a pony or messy bun to not have to deal with it. But this was apparently “not how a cheerleader should present herself”. Eager to not be the weird deaf tomboy who stuck out like a sore thumb, Harley accepted the help finding a new look. Skinny jeans, mini skirts and feminine tops that revealed curves he never wanted soon replaced most of his ‘boy’ clothes. He also started wearing his hair down most days to hide his cochlear implants. If people didn’t see them, they almost forgot he was deaf. With his new aesthetic, he finally looked like a ‘normal’ girl.
Objectively, Harley knew they were considered attractive. But when they looked at themself in the mirror, they felt no connection to the feminine reflection staring back at them. It was easy to explain this feeling away - their body had betrayed them and becoming deaf had been traumatic, so of course it was hard to feel connected to it now. But that explanation didn’t quite sit right and it didn’t do anything to lessen the numbness Harley felt deep down every time they had to put on the stereotypical teenage girl persona, or get into a cheer uniform or gymnastics leotard. And it didn’t explain the jealousy Harley felt every time he was intimate with a boyfriend.
When Harley was fifteen, he was out with his brother when they happened across two adults that were signing. He knew it was rude to stare but he couldn’t help it. The world of sign language had been a closed door from the time he was in kindergarten, so it was incredible to see it in action. And, more than likely, at least one of the people signing was deaf too. But they were really deaf, while Harley had come to see himself as ‘hearing lite’. Why would they want anything to do with him? His brother clearly did not agree with this sentiment and walked right up to the signing strangers, introducing himself and Harley. One of them was a Deaf man who was ten years older than Harley. It turned out that he had just graduated with a Deaf Studies degree and was well connected to the local Deaf community. He helped both Harley and his brother learn American Sign Language, and introduced Harley to the local Deaf community.
Harley had always managed pretty well with hearing people, but gaining access to sign language and Deaf culture was like discovering a whole new world. They wanted to dive into it even more, spreading their wings beyond their small Louisiana town. Luckily, the biggest Deaf college in America - and the city with the largest Deaf community - was the same city Harley had been born in. Still having a lot of family near Washington DC, it was an easy decision to go to Gallaudet University while living with their Maamaa.
Gallaudet was not what Harley had imagined. He heard rumors that Gallaudet could be a little cliquey, but he didn’t give it much thought. High school had been cliquey and he did just fine. But the things that mattered at his hearing high school were not the things people cared about at Deaf university. He was the only Deaf person in his family. He wasn’t born deaf. He used a cochlear implant. He could sign fluently, but it wasn’t his first (or even second) language. While Harley was an expert at navigating between the Deaf and the hearing world, he always felt like he didn’t quite fit into either world and this insecurity was magnified while he was at Gallaudet.
During their freshman year, Harley made the decision to transfer to Parsons in New York City. The school had an illustration degree, and it was located in the same city as major book publishers. Their childhood dream had been to become a comic book artist, with their backup being to do illustrations for childrens’ books, and a degree in illustration set them up for both. The biggest drawback was that they had no family in New York, leaving them on their own for the first time. But they quickly realized this had some major benefits. Nobody cared what Harley looked like; even participating in The New School’s cheerleading squad, there were no unofficial dress code requirements. Their mom wasn’t there to stop them from cutting their hair short, and nobody shared any criticisms when he once again replaced dresses and heels for patterned button ups and sneakers. For the first time that Harley could remember, they felt okay in their own skin. Some days they even felt good. Yet every time they had to put on that cheer uniform, all of those positive feelings would practically leak out of their body and it would take several days to feel okay again. Harley finally opened up to a teammate about it one night before a game, and that friend said something that changed Harley’s world. Do you think you might be trans?
At first, Harley laughed off this idea. He was certainly aware trans people existed, but it was always an abstract idea. Other people were transgender. He had been a stereotypical high school cheerleader (minus the meanness) and he had performed that character well. But that was just it…’she’ was a character, and to some degree he realized he always saw her more as an alter ego than who he really was. He was Superman, while ‘she’ was his Clark Kent…just with lipstick instead of glasses. As Harley came out and started to transition, he realized that this was what his body was supposed to feel like and that the person in the mirror finally felt like it was really him. He leaned hard into this new identity, going exclusively by he/him pronouns, and seeing himself as a binary trans man.
Once Harley graduated from Parsons, he started looking for work in New York. The plan his parents drilled into both him and his brother had always been simple; graduate high school, get into a good college, graduate college, get hired. But there were so many aspiring artists in New York and there were fewer publishing companies now than when Harley had set out on his college path. By day, Harley worked on his art and tried to make connections in the art world that would lead to the career he wanted. By night, he was a bartender - the same job he had done throughout college. As the months went on, Harley didn’t catch any breaks in art and worried he would never be anything but a bartender with an unused art degree. So he started applying for any art job he could find, including some in New Bellevoux. When the Heyes Park House and Museum hired him on, he moved back to his hometown. It was a little bittersweet, leaving the big city behind, but Harley was mostly excited to be back with his friends and family.
Since coming back to town, Harley’s found themself re-examining the first eighteen years of their life from a new perspective. They’ve come to realize that when they came out as a boy, maybe the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction to compensate. They still very happy they transitioned, but have come to realize having a transmasc body doesn’t mean they have to put themself in that binary as well. What this all means to them, they’re still not sure, but they’ve recently started using they/them pronouns.
As for their career, being a docent was never part of their plan. They always thought working in a museum would be boring and stuffy. However, for the first time in their life, they’re seeing how much work actually goes into making an exhibit. While working at the museum, and taking gigs as a freelance artist, Harley decided to go back to school and get their Masters degree in Art History.
