Unwelcomed

56

Despite the fact that it resulted in my food stamp allotment being suspended, the Unemployment compensation checks vastly exceeded the state aid stipend I had become used to living on. It was about three times as much, twice as often. My overdraft balance was promptly paid off and money began to again fill my savings account. Now having enough money to pay for gas in my car, I again set my sights on Denver trips.

Since receiving the flyer for the 'Gender Support Group' from the community mental health center at the end of the previous year, I had been toying with the idea of contacting them. But the problem was to call the GSG would have been a long distance charge and a line item on my mother's long distance bill. The last thing I needed in my life was her wondering what that phone number was about. So I had set my goal to one day drive there and visit their office in person and learn about what they had to offer. Also this drive would act like a tiny vacation day away from my usual daily activities and issues of the past nine months.

Driving to Denver then making my way to an older part of town, I found what I had imaged to be an office building was actually a small Victorian style house. Once finding one of the rare street-side parking spots, I made my way into the house occupied by just one person at a reception desk. The greeter was holding down the fort, but effectively the support group itself had its meetings in the evenings. Still, I was invited to look around the first floor where the small living and dining rooms had been merged into one large meeting area in a living room furnished style. The back room had been converted to a locker space for those wishing to store one set of clothes for times they wished to leave home looking one way and come here to redress for the evening. The floor ended with a turn to a small kitchen behind a bathroom, the stairs to an upper level and the reception foyer I had first entered. I never did find out what was in the upstairs rooms.

The greeter spent some time with me chatting, asking about my background and interests. Still a bit apprehensive, I kept everything vague. When asked if I was a transsexual or a transvestite I said I was exploring at the moment and wasn't sure. I was invited to browse the book collection in the bookcases built into the living room walls and then on the way out I was given more comprehensive flyers for the group, various topic based meeting times, and all that they offered beyond. When I got home I looked through the flyers more closely and discovered they offered a membership packet reputedly with details on all the gender roles and options and I thought this might be the perfect thing for me to get so I could bring myself up to speed on the whole area and get a handle on where I fit in.

As I pondered this, I went back to pursuing my health issues and called Premier Medical Center and made an appointment with the first available general care doctor they had. While my experience with the gastroenterologist there had ended bizarrely, my search for a primary care doctor in my own town had been a failure. I thought that, perhaps I could find myself the primary care doctor I needed at Premier Medical Center, outside of the local politics and 'old boys network' that seemed to control my home town's medical community. When I arrived for my appointment, I discovered that the next available doctor was a woman. Perhaps I had just gotten a bad apple the first time and my original hope that a female doctor would be more understanding of my strange puberty again emerged. She seemed nice and thoughtful as I discussed my history of weight loss, explained the tests I had including the diagnoses of a fructose intolerance and fat malabsorption issue and the level of weakness I endured from the weight loss and periodically painful bowel movements.

She took all this in and decided that I should have a neurological test performed first. While it was possible my sense of weakness was a result of the profound weight loss, it could also be the result of something else, I was told. The appointment ended very positively and I was directed to the scheduling desk to take the doctor's order and schedule my return date for the test as well as a follow-up with her for a physical examination. I left this appointment feeling it had gone well, but after the past year, this feeling was tempered by experience.

As I was back in Denver, I made another trip to the GSG and again visited with the greeter and pulled some of the magazines off the shelves and browsed them for a bit. While I was invited to stay for that evening's meeting, I wanted to get home and back into my locked bedroom before my mother got off of work so I wouldn't have to see her and face her verbal assault when I got home. But I did muster up the courage and handed over a check for the full membership amount, expecting that I could get my packet and go home. But it turned out memberships had to be processed and the packet would be mailed to me once that was done. They could mail it to my given home address, couldn't they? ''Yes... Sure,'' I said trying to convince myself as I thought over the possible problems with it. Since moving to Colorado, mother had given me the spare mobile home park's post box key for her lot, assigning me the task of collecting the mail each day and having it waiting for her when she got home. While she did get the mail herself, it was typically only once a week on one of her days off. So I should be able to receive the GSG packet in the mailbox before her... I concluded to tamp down the sudden burst of butterflies as I headed home.

To my surprise my mother had gotten home a bit early and so I had to see her as I came in. As I had avoided seeing her for many months, this was her first chance to say something to me eye-to-eye. From her living room chair she glared at me as I came in the door and closed it behind me ready to go straight to my bedroom. She called my name and I looked to her as she said, ''I've spoken with your sister and brothers and they all agree with me what a terrible person you are for faking your health problems and embarrassing me with my coworkers at the hospital.'' As I had never met any of her coworkers, I assumed she meant the rumors her primary doctor had been spreading about me. ''You are to leave my home immediately and never return or your siblings will hate you and never forgive you,'' she declared. I turned and continued on to my bedroom, ignoring her. She had made the mistake of claiming that she had spoken to my eldest brother: She hadn't spoken to him once since moving to Colorado and had often made it clear it was up to him to make the first call to her. It was obvious that she never would have called him, even to discuss the matter of me effectively squatting in her mobile home, thus I knew what she had said about all of my siblings was complete and utter bull pucky. Had she only mentioned my sister and not as older brother I would have thought it possible, but she probably felt that by invoking all of my siblings, I would be fearful enough of losing one of them that I would do what she said without thinking... Moving out of my bedroom in her mobile home and take up living on the streets instead.

Sure enough the packet came on a day my mother was at work and I opened it up and sorted through all that was included. Names and contact information for various counselors specializing in transsexuals and transvestites, and detailed definitions and descriptions of both. But it was one side note that caught my eye, noting that 'intersexed' people were not welcomed at the support group, defining them as people with biologically mixed issues that the club did not and would not deal with... Looking up the word intersex I discovered it covered people with physical mixed sex manifestations as well as possible chromosomal abnormalities.

Was this me?

As I had just paid a large chunk of money to become a member of the support group, the last thing I wanted to think about was my membership possibly being void, so I pushed that thought aside and went to my neurological testing appointment the following week.

The test was to have me take off my shoes & pants and lay down on a table while a series of wired needles were put in place. The technician said the needles were short and wouldn't actually penetrate the skin layer so I wouldn't have to worry about any bleeding or infection. The goal was to align the needles to nerves in my right arm and leg to then send current from one end to measure the resistance as the current passed through the length of nerves. In this way they could tell if my weakness was in part caused by a nerve conduction problem. She used a small tape measure to figure out the placement of the needles and marked off the locations with a black felt tip pen. Had I know this ahead of time I would have brought my fall jacket with me to cover up my arm after the test was done. Then she started inserting the needles one after another, me wincing with each one, until she reached the end leaving a web of wires from the needles reaching to the machine. Then she was going to attach the electrode with the power and lifted it off the machine and swept her arm up into the web of wires and pulled them up as well, causing each needle to be yanked free at an angle, tearing open my skin. Most of them started bleeding and the technician panicked, she handed me some tissues to dowse the trickling blood and frantically searched the room for bandages. But she had to leave the room to find them instead.

When she returned, most of the bleeding pinholes had come to a stop and she wiped down my wounds with alcohol, then placed a little circular bandage over each one. Wiping my arm with the alcohol had also blurred the felt tip markings, but she thought she could see them clearly enough, only having to remeasure and mark one of them. She apologized and noted that she would have to now offset the needles from the best placement points, but that it really shouldn't make a significant impact on the test results if they were all equally offset. Wiping the tips of each needle with the alcohol, she again quickly placed each and every one into my right arm & leg until the web of wires to the machine was restored. She was having to rush as the allotted time to do the test was quickly running out after the mistake. She reached for the electrode that would create the electrical pulse and swept her arm up, through all of the wires and ripping all of the needles out, again. She frantically poured alcohol onto a fresh swab and used it to wipe at all of the new bleeding spots running down my arm and leg. She was now a nervous wreck, her hands shaking as she tried to put new little bandages over the new holes torn in my skin. I had to take over and do it myself as she got the beep from the wall phone that served as the warning that the room would soon be needed for another patient's test. She fretted over if she should call the front desk and tell them that things were running late or if she should have me return to the waiting room until all of the other scheduled tests were complete, and then get back to me at the end of the day.

I interjected into her self debate and simply said, ''Let's not do this.'' What? I noted that now the needles would have to be even further from the ideal positions given the additional bandages covering me so I was starting to doubt the test would be any good. She said that the first spots might heal up enough by the end of the afternoon and she could put the needles back in those holes. This suggestion made me even more resolved, ''Yeah, let's not do this.'' and I pulled on my pants and put my shoes on from the side of the table and got ready to leave. Now she was positively frantic as she got the second beep from the wall mounted phone and I made my way out. Into the hallway, I slipped into the next bathroom I saw and fought off my own case of the shakes before I felt strong enough to leave the building.

As I was already in Denver I had planned to again stop at the GSG but now wondered if I should, given my arm speckled in little round bandages and black lines. I decided to go ahead, thinking it might make a good conversation piece with the greeter once I got there. But the person who served as the volunteer greeter must have had the day off or had gone out to get lunch and the house was locked shut and dark. I debated waiting outside on the sidewalk in case the greeter was going to be returning soon, but given how well the day had gone so far, I decided to just go on home.

When I returned to Premier Medical Center for my physical with the doctor, I expected part of our visit would be to discuss what had happened on test day and possibly reschedule it with a different technician. The nurse lead me to the room and had me get undressed, putting on the usual gown when waiting for the doctor. After a bit she entered the room seething and yelling at me that I had refused to complete the test because I knew it would show there was nothing wrong. When I tried to explain what had actually happened and show her the little scabs down my arm, she said she already knew that nothing had happened beyond my refusing to take the test. She wasn't going to hear anything else about it.

And so there I was sitting on the exam table in the gown and she was pacing the floor still very angry. We were in silence for a moment as she gathered herself then decided to proceed with the physical. As she came at me I quickly mentioned that I had some past issues with – and she pulled the gown open. She promptly turned heel and fled for the door. ''You freaks and your back alley hormones!'' she yelled at me. The door was slammed behind her and this time I didn't imagine she was going to return and just glumly removed the gown and put my clothes back on. I left the building not thinking I'd ever return to Premier Medical Center again. EVER.

I could at least return to the GSG house and see if they were open and end my time in Denver with a positive experience. When I got there, the building was again open and the familiar greeter was there and happy to see me again. Perhaps noticing the mood I was in, they asked what had happened. I dropped onto one of the couches in the meeting room while I debated whether or not to talk about it. But I realized that the whole point of the GSG was to be a support group for each other and concluded that this was the right place to bring it up. Not mentioning the testing issues or that part of the appointment with the doctor, I cut to the chase of the doctor's reaction to seeing me and what she had yelled at me. ''What the hell was that supposed to mean?'', I wondered, ''Back alley hormones?''

The greeter became quiet before responding, ''You don't know?'' No. ''You've never taken any?'' No. It was explained that back alley hormones are what transsexuals bought off the black market when they couldn't get a doctor's approval to start 'transitioning' into another sex. Oh, I realized that must have been what the doctor had imagined when seeing how I was after my strange puberty. But I kept that realization to myself as the greeter went and got a copy of the information packet. ''Are you sure you've never taken hormones?'' I was again asked and I again assured I hadn't. The greeter flipped to the page with the paragraph denoting 'interesexed' for me to review, and then pointed out the conclusion that the GSG was not the place for them.

The greeter then left me alone to sit there and returned to sit at the front desk. Apparently we weren't going to talk any longer. After a bit, I got the message and left without another word.

From that point forward I concluded I must be 'intersexed'. But now that I finally had a label, what could I do with it?

I actually did return a couple more times to visit some evening GSG meetings. The greeter wasn't there to 'out me' and I just listened. It soon became clear why it wasn't the place for intersexed people. Transsexuals and transvestites were unambiguously 'normal' members of one sex and felt the spirit of partially or completely being a member of the other sex. I didn't have any feelings of belonging to any sex and I would find out years later that this was common for intersexed people.

As transgendered people were all about one's inner gender identity, people without any such inner gender sense must have seemed creepy and unnatural...

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