Politics

108

Since the truck had crashed through my previous apartment the last night I had stayed at Pat's house, I had since talked to him on the phone a few times and even visited him one weekend when Daina went to Denver to see her mother and she dropped me off at his house for the afternoon. It had been eight years of being friends since we'd met at the software start-up firm we had both briefly worked at. Given my recent experience at RMT, I had to call him and let him know of the news and he, working for AT&T at the time, told me that corporations were often like that, short-sighted & thoughtless.

But there were other things going on in my life as well.

It was time to find myself a new primary care physician NOT related to the community health clinic. The young physician who had been seeing me, since my original doctor there had been run out of the state, had recently come under pressure for continuing to treat me. I understood the position he was in and returned to the doctor referral phone numbers with little effect. Despite not being Gay, I figured that a doctor willing to have Gay patients might also be more tolerant of having an intersexed patient and called their local helpline asking if they had any medical doctors they would recommend. The helpline officially had none, but the woman who answered the phone did note who her own doctor was and said she had been having good experiences with her. I took down the name and number and called to see if her office accepted my insurance coverage. They did and I made an initial appointment.

To cut the line of harassment that followed me in the medical community, I decided not to have my records from the community health clinic sent to her thus, as they wouldn't have her name or address, other people in the medical community wouldn't be able to get it as well. My hope was to have a firewall that would keep this new doctor safe from bullying if she took me on as a patient. The first appointment went well and I asked her right up front if she was comfortable having a patient who was intersexed. She laughed, but said she was and so I accepted her as my new primary doctor.

Given this recent luck with the local Gay helpline, I decided to find out more about them and what other professionals they might recommend working with in town. As part of visiting them I became aware of the new state initiative on the upcoming November ballot. Sponsored by a church group, it was called 'Amendment 2' and it purportedly was to insure Gays, Bisexuals & Transsexuals didn't end up with 'Special Rights' in the state that would 'exceed the normals rights everyone else had'. I decided to join a meeting about the proposed amendment and they went through it line for line. After a page and three quarters of preamble, we finally reached the substantive clauses which ordered that Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgendered people couldn't be protected under the laws of Colorado, be they state, county or local. The first obvious question was: ''Did it mean protected by any law?'' If so, then it would include laws against assault, robbery, fraud and even murder. If it wasn't to be so broad, why didn't they say so in the substantive language? It seemed the actual legal text at the end of the amendment was very different in action to what the generous preamble had been saying. It looked like the intent of the amendment was very different than what most people had been publicly told.

Next, the meeting host introduced us to some 'interesting text' in the Americans With Disabilities Act of Nineteen Ninety. Senators Edward Kennedy and Jesse Helms had co-sponsored an amendment to it which added legal protection to intersexed people as well as any mixed sex individuals. The host's intention was to point out that the definition of 'mixed sexed individuals' hadn't been legally defined and wondered if it could be interpreted broadly enough to include people with interests that could be deemed as a mixture of the sexes, such as men liking men as women liked men, etc. In my case I paid little attention to the rest of the point as I realized I didn't need it to be more broadly interpreted to include me. Even if I wasn't covered because of my stuttering, or recent past with an intestinal infection, I was covered simply for being intersexed. With further research I found that it assured I would no longer have to face losing a job for not being able to pass a physical given my mixed-sex background: Disqualifications stemming from a 'physical' had to be directly related to one's ability to perform a job. For the first time since puberty one of the biggest employment clouds over my head had disappeared.

Still, there were concerns about my friends. Many of them had bought into the preamble of Amendment 2 and had become supporters. Given my training with Samuel, my psychologist, I knew not to directly disagree on matters but to prompt research desires in those friends. I'd ask them if they had read the whole amendment or just the preamble? If they weren't willing to read the whole text, I'd come back to them with it and tell them I was confused by the final paragraphs and asked what it meant to them? While I wasn't wholly successful at swaying all of my friends away from their support, I guessed I had convinced almost half of them to back away from it.

Then came the Fall phone call with Pat as we chatted about RMT, life and the coming political election and we finally got around to the topic of Amendment 2. Given his religious background he was definitely for it as 'those people' didn't need 'special rights'. When I asked if he had read the entire amendment or just the preamble he noted that he didn't have to do either as his church had let him know of the amendment and how to vote was obvious. Being on a phone line, I couldn't show the full text to Pat and ask him what the last few paragraphs meant so I brain stormed another way of opening his mind on the topic. I asked him if he was concerned that it might impact people who weren't Gay, but who people simply assumed they were. He didn't know what I meant. So I drew from examples in my own life during the previous decade where people noticed I wasn't actively dating a string of girls and asked me if I was Gay as a result. Then I told him of others who had simply assumed it to be the case. What if someone assumed someone else was Gay, would that assumption be enough legal grounds to conclude they weren't protected under the laws of Colorado?

Pat slammed the handset of the phone against a table three times and I pulled away my handset from my ear to protect it from the loud noise. ''Are you still there?'' I heard him ask. I said I was and he slammed down the receiver again, this time hanging it up. Stunned, I took a moment to let this filter in and then decided to call back. There was no answer. I paced around my apartment for a bit while I debated what this meant and after a few more minutes I called back. This time his wife answered and informed me that Pat was gathering up any belongings of mine he had borrowed over the years and I was to stop by their house tomorrow and pick it up. Pat wasn't going to talk to me again. The call was over.

I next called Daina and told her of the call to Pat and asked if I could borrow her car for the next day. She agreed. When I got to his house in Denver, his wife answered the door. As it was a weekday, I already guessed Pat wouldn't be home, but I asked his wife what the problem was. She wore a smirk, but wouldn't tell me, simply handing me a box with a couple of my science fiction books and record albums. I was never told why, but it was clear my friendship with Pat was abruptly over.

I guess I had gotten the answer to my question. Not only if someone assumed someone was Gay could they be gotten rid of in Pat's eyes, even if they had ever been falsely assumed to be Gay, that was good enough for him.

The amendment passed and went to the Supreme Court. They confirmed that the final language in the law was too broad to pass constitutional muster and threw it out. As the rest of Amendment 2 was just the glossy preamble, that decision effectively left the Amendment null and void.

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Over Achieving

107

Focusing on College in July of Nineteen Ninety-Two, I was quickly the apple of the computer instructor's eye and I wowed and amazed him with my understanding of logical routines and computer obscurities. Going through the text book we came across the statistic that a company could only expect to complete ten lines of debugged code per day, per person, for any project. I felt that number was low, but the instructor pointed out it included systems analysis & designing, documentation writing, and testing time, not just the time it took to write the code. I still felt that was a little low and so the teacher decided to challenge me. Our first project was to write a stock tracking program, where the user would manually input various stock codes and daily numbers and the program would provide various averages which the user could use to decide if it was a good time to buy or sell. These were the minimum needs but we'd get brownie points if it exceeded those needs. Given the complexity of the task, he broke the class into two groups who would each work on the project separately... And then there was me: I'd be working alone. We had two weeks for the project and he wished us luck and offered to be available to provide any help required.

The following week I came in with the printed documentation I had finished for the program. I handed it to him along with a disk. He asked what the disk was for and I said, somewhat confused by his question as I thought it would be obvious, that it was the program. I also gave him my time sheet noting how many hours I had been working on it and when during the past week. I noted that I had averaged thirty lines of debugged code... an hour. He couldn't believe it and did the math himself assuming I had never slept, visited with friends, or eaten since he had assigned the task. Even with all of that factored in, he figured I had produced around three hundred lines of code per day. He made sure I remained as a group of one for all future coding projects during the class so I wouldn't just quickly put out the code and leave any team mates in the dust without them having a chance to code themselves. I thought that made sense.

Toward the end of the Summer semester came a surprise call from VocRehab. They had worked out a one month trial job for me at RMT. I would work at the complex on tasks they needed, but given the red tape of them being a national corporation, rather than my working there and being paid by them, and then them asking for reimbursement on my initial pay, VocRehab was going to pay me directly for the first month I worked there. I would be like a free 'independent contractor' for the company as they got to review my skills and decide if they wanted to hire me. I readily accepted the offer and my counselor noted that I'd need to get myself some formal clothing for my time working there. That threw me for a loop as I had none, but told him it wouldn't be a problem.

I asked Daina if she could loan me the money to buy a work wardrobe and I'd pay her back once I got my VocRehab check. Enthusiastically, she agreed and we were soon off to thrift shops in search of what I could find. Ultimately we got me about five short sleeved button up shirts. Given how light the material was, I would need to go back to the ACE bandage binding technique and even wear an additional white tee shirt under the work shirt to better disguise the presence of the ACE bandage, itself. Then we picked out a bunch of neck ties that would go along with the shirts and Daina, thankfully, knew how to tie them and showed me. Once again for ventilation, I hoped the short sleeved shirts wouldn't look out of place as I'd start the job at the tail end of August. While I still had trepidations about my ability to get a job at a corporation as I'd known in the past they would often require passing a physical as an employment requirement, I pushed that fear aside for now.

My work uniform set, I next had to deal with school.

I could take my Finals the week before the end of the semester and be done with my classes a week early so they wouldn't interfere with the start of my new job. But I would have to switch to night classes for the Fall semester to ensure there wouldn't be a conflict for the last two weeks of my one month trial job. Further, one of my degree requirements was to perform a 'work study' job. This would normally take place once I was reaching the end of my college time and just before I would get my degree. But as the opportunity was too good to pass up, I asked the administration if I could count my month at RMT as my work study requirement. Not only could I, but normally the best their students could hope for was a job copying diskettes as their work study so the College was thrilled that one of their students was going to be doing their time at RMT! Checking with the VocRehab counselor, he saw no conflict with it, either.

The next problem was my lack of a car. It turned out the local buses only ran during the daytime hours and the closest bus stop to the RMT complex was still a mile away. While taking the bus to RMT would be very problematic given the long walk to & from the bus stop while wearing my minimum layers of clothing, once night school started I'd definitely need a ride to & from College at a minimum. Daina offered to let me use her car, effectively I would keep her car overnight and then pick her up in the morning and take her to work, then drive to my RMT job. As the end of the school day came, she would work late on paperwork until I was done for the work day and then pick her up at the school. We'd have dinner someplace and then she'd drop me off at College allowing her to keep the car for any evening errands and then pick me up after classes. I'd drive back to her place and drop her off and I'd go home for homework and bed. While this plan worked on paper and we didn't have to worry about it during the first two weeks as I didn't have classes... Once the plan was in full swing Daina quickly chaffed at the sudden increase in gas costs and having to spend ten hour days in her classroom. She insisted and I agreed that once RMT hired me after the trial month, I was to promptly buy my own car.

I was heady with the thought that I would soon be able to buy myself my own car once again and no longer have to depend on free local bus passes from Vocational Rehabilitation.

When I arrived at RMT for my first week, I met the senior manager who had come up with the plan and was then introduced to the manager of the X400 messaging group who I'd be working for. He in turn introduced me to the 'team lead' who would be in charge of me and in return that team member took me to my empty cubical. It would take the next two days just to get the cubical set up and I used the time in between to tour the building alone with my little badge to defend me and spend some time under the skylight lit library area of the complex paging through the Digital Vax manuals; the machines I was told I was going to be working with once I had a computer terminal.

On the third day I was ready for my first assignment, the team lead looked through the 'needed code changes list' and assigned me to change a single line of an existing program. That took me a couple of hours, mainly just familiarizing myself with the system of getting the source code from the coding library and then compiling and testing my change before turning it in well before lunch time. I was ready for my next assignment. He had thought it would have at least taken me the whole day and asked that I come back to him after lunch for my next assignment.

While I didn't have cash to afford lunch, I did pocket a few dollars from my tiny savings to pay for my daily soda at their cafeteria, it was a gorgeous two story open area made of concrete which had an ambiance between a cave and a cathedral. I'd take a seat in a far corner and spend my time slowly sipping the soda and watch as the employees would trickle in for the lunch hour and socialize. Some would eat & run while others suddenly realized the clock after over an hour of socializing and rush to finish eating before parting from friends and returning to work.

When I returned to the team lead, he simply handed me the rest of the 'to do list' hoping that would keep me busy for the rest of my time. When I turned in all the completed work to him at the end of the week, he pointed out he meant 'for the rest of my time during the trial month', not for the week as I had assumed. He didn't know what else to assign to me and I had three weeks left to fill. He said he'd find something for me by the next week and I could leave early for the weekend. As Daina had needed the car for work during that day, I walked to that nearest local bus stop a mile away. Once I was there, I was soaked through with sweat and was glad I wasn't having to make this walk twice each day.

The following week I came in and the team lead had decided to stump me. They had always wanted an X400 message dump utility for debugging purposes but never had the time to create one. Thus my job would be to create that utility from scratch. He wished me luck and told me where to find documentation on the X400 message interchange file format.

The X400 messaging format was how companies exchanged eMails with each other over the developing internet. While internal messaging formats were often just text files, the X400 message format had to take in all considerations as to what sort of message might be passed through the internet. Not just text, but voice, telex, faxes, etc. As a result, the file format for a message was complex, if not convoluted, and the freakiest thing I had ever seen. Not only was the message dump utility going to have to be complex as well, it would also have to serve as my learning tool to come to grips with the file format itself. On the second day I asked if I could have sample X400 messages to use for testing. They got that data to me by the end of the day. By the third day I realized I wanted more time to work on this each day, but as I was tied to borrowing Daina's car and keeping to her schedule, I couldn't return during the evenings to keep working with the sample data. I asked if they had an option where I could dial in from home? They did and since I already knew Jeff had a spare Digital terminal I could borrow for a few weeks, I was soon spending my hours at home working on the same code I was working on during the day. Knowing by my third week I'd have to accommodate college classes into my schedule, I made a weekend long effort to finish the utility.

I returned Tuesday morning, after Labor day weekend, and asked the team lead if he'd like to review the output of my utility. He assumed I meant review the proposed output of the utility and said I could bring a copy to his desk, instead I arrived with the program on a disk. It took him a moment to understand it was a working program I wanted to show him and then he gave it a try. He was impressed that it was already a working program, but felt the output was too technical in nature: 'Priority = Normal, From = Bob'. He felt it wasn't readable enough. The output had to be readable, but when I asked him what that would be, he didn't know. I'd have to just work it out for myself and then he'd let me know if it was good or not. Returning to my cubicle I easily foresaw days of frustration coming up with a new output format for him to nix and my returning back to the drawing board to try again.... and again.... and again.

Instead I got the idea of attaching my FlexBase code library to it. A system I had developed in the early eighties to serve as a universal online site code base, it worked on the concept of 'you draw-up the format you want an online page to display and it would determine all of the logical needs to fill it in' for each unique user. In this case I married in the form based logic and allowed the X400 message dump routines to fill the variables with the message values. This took me almost three whole days to complete and test and then another hour making the first form template for the output. I took this new, 'more readable' output to the team lead. While he thought it was better, he still had some changes he wanted to it. I left and went to my terminal, tweaked the form template and reprinted the message data and was back at his cube within ten minutes with the updated print up and a huge smile on my face. He assumed I had made this 'example page' by hand and gave some more recommendations to tweak it. I didn't let on and returned to my cube, tweaked the form, reprinted and was back at his cube. He liked that one and asked how long it would take for me to incorporate these changes into the program. I told him I already had and this was the actual output.

I treasured that look on his face. Jaw agape, eyes wide, reading his mind that if he hadn't already seen the speed of my work the previous two weeks he wouldn't have believed it. But even knowing that it was still hard for him to accept and he asked me how I could have changed the output of the program so quickly. I told him of my FlexBase code library and showed him the template form it used and he tweaked it himself and reran the program to see the updated, instant results. In High School my coding skills had been admired, but as I was a 'big fish in a small pond' I really couldn't gauge if I was truly that good, or simply the best looking dog given what little competition I had. I knew my time at RMT would be my first true chance to find how good my skills really were, and it didn't disappoint!

The team lead asked for my source code and told me I could leave early for the weekend. The following Monday he came to my cubical with a huge smile on his face. He pointed out that he had a Masters Degree in software development, that looking at my code Friday afternoon he had become so impressed by it that he spent the rest of the weekend going through it for fun. He admired the logical structuring of my code and my use of tables to drive the code flow, not to mention the output coding which allowed the easy to modify template. He thought this was some of the best code he had seen in his life, and he was highly recommending me to be hired as an employee by the company. He gave me a copy of his letter of recommendation and his manager was reviewing it as we spoke.

For the rest of the week, more and more high level employees and managers paraded into my cubicle to see me run the code, promptly update the form with their suggestions as they watched and reran the program affirming their requested output changes. By the middle of the week they wanted to offer me a job...! There was just one little question: ''What degree do you have?''

I noted that I was self taught and didn't have a degree, as such, but was currently in night College to complete my Associates Degree by the turn of the year as I continued on to a Bachelors of Science. There seemed to be some turmoil with this answer and then they asked me when I thought I'd have that Bachelors in hand? In another year and a half, or so.

No job for me.

The head of the company on the other side of the nation had recently dictated that he wanted to have 'the smartest work force of any telecommunications firm' and by 'smartest' that meant everyone had to at least have a Bachelors Degree to get hired. As I didn't have that degree in hand, it didn't matter what level I performed at, they simply couldn't hire me.

So I got my work study completion form filled out by the manager as well as a glowing review written for the Vocation Rehabilitation people to have. Then I was back home at the end of the four week period with nothing but college studies to again fill my time.

I felt like I was the most highly praised applicant they wouldn't hire!

(at least I no longer had to worry about passing a physical examination to work there.)

untitled

106

[Disclaimer: This segment is based on my understanding and advice from the early nineteen nineties, I'm sure the state of scientific knowledge has improved since then so please only use the details here as a jumping off point for your own search for answers, not as the sum total of your knowledge...]

With the Hollywood check received, deposited & cleared, I went ahead and made an 'initial evaluation appointment' with the best doctor I could find knowledgeable in intersexed conditions. I was able to get the appointment before other things came up during the month of August and I asked Daina if I could borrow her car for the day so I wouldn't have to use the trick of taking a national bus to Denver one day, staying over night, and then returning the next. She agreed and I put down the sense of butterflies the appointment date gave me as I continued through my next two weeks of College. Finally the day came and Daina picked me up at my apartment on her way to work, and then I dropped her off at her job and pulled onto the highway to get to Denver and the appointment.

Dr. 'Czarnecki' was a family doctor who had come into the intersexed field through a patient of his who he was already seeing for routine matters. As such, he was the closest available doctor I could see about my condition and after fifteen years since my surprise puberty I might finally get some serious insight into my condition. Arriving, it was like any other doctor's office and I checked in, gave my insurance information for future reference and then paid up front for my initial appointment that wouldn't be covered by the insurance. I then got to take a seat in the waiting area and wondered how many, if any, of the people I saw in there were also of an intersexed background. No clue.

My name was called and I was lead to the doctor's little office room with his desk, not an examination room. It's always nice to get to know a doctor before you're told to undress! He was pleasant and asked about my personal background, first, before getting into the puberty side. But then we got to the topic and he told me how rare it was for an intersexed person not to be identified at birth as checking genitals was a standard procedure after delivery. I had also wondered about this and it was one of the things my psychologist, 'Samuel', and I had discussed one time. The theory was, given my troubled delivery, I was chucked aside without further examination as the doctors and nurses focused on saving my mother. I passed the theory on to Dr. Czarnecki and he took it as a likely possibility.

And so he explained to me that each fetus starts out as female with a default set of hormone receptors and then a few weeks later half of those receptors further develop for all fetuses and for 'X/Y' chromosome pairs the baby will then physically masculinize. In the case of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, though, most if not all of the receptors remain in their default condition, in the case for sex hormones that would be for estrogen, and as such the resulting body has little to any response to testosterone once born. I could now understand why my body hadn't significantly responded to testosterone at puberty but I asked how this would explain my developing as a woman since, as far as I knew, I had nothing to produce estrogen in my body. He noted that testosterone and estrogen are very similar hormones and as such a low level of each opposite type is produced in both sexes while the primary hormone is created by the body. This is referred to as 'the backwash effect'. Thus while my body was pumping out a high puberty level of testosterone, which I had very few receptors to notice it, it was also creating a lesser amount of estrogen which my body had many additional receptors to respond to it. Thus in my case a little went a very long way.

I told him of the test of my testosterone level a few years back which had showed I was still at a puberty level of testosterone. He wasn't surprised by this as, without the receptors to notice the testosterone level in the body, the pituitary gland sends out signals for the testicles to produce more and more endlessly. Because of this perpetual demand to produce abnormal testosterone levels, the testicles often go cancerous after many years of this. It is traditional practice to remove the testicles of intersexed patients as a safeguard against this cancer potential and such would be the recommendation for me regardless of how I otherwise wished to handle the rest of my 'situation'. It was time for the physical examination and I was lead to an examination room and told to undress and get into a gown while the doctor saw another patient.

When he came in, he reviewed my body, examined my pubic area, over all body hair and facial hair level and my breast development. He asked me if my parents had been mostly body hair free. I laughed at this as I recalled a time I had once seen my father naked and hadn't realized it at the time given his high level of body hair. In the case of my mother, I believed it was average as she did shave her legs and underarms. The physical review was done, it was time for me to get dressed and meet him in his office, again. He then checked with another patient in the meantime as I got clothed and made my own way to his office and took a seat, glancing around at his books, mementos and degrees on display as I waited.

When he returned he told me that I suffered from Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome given my male genitals were not fully developed and my significantly reduced response to the testosterone in my body. He doubted my body could masculinize any more than it already had but he wished to redo the testosterone level test to make sure I was still in the high range. With this as the diagnosis one option was to remain 'male' and have surgery to remove my breasts and the testicles and a surgeon could also remove the excess tissue currently engulfing my under developed penis which would allow me fewer problems with urination. If I wished I could go an additional step and have a penile implant put in place which I could use to participate as a male in sex. I noted that I had never actually been interested in having any sex. He said this was also not uncommon as testosterone triggered the sex drive for both men and women, and without the receptors in my brain to be triggered by the testosterone in my body, I would likely never have a biological sex drive. Such was the case for many intersexed people, if not most.

My other option was to live the rest of my life 'female'. In that case I would still need to have my testicles removed as well as my existing penile 'nub'. Again this would make peeing easier as I would have a straight path for urine flow and I would no longer have to live the rest of my life with my breasts bound for social reasons. In this case a surgeon would also perform a vaginoplasty which would allow me to have sex as a female, if I wished, as well as resolve any questions about my physical sex. In this case, I would also likely need an estrogen supplement to replace the estrogen level currently produced with the testosterone in my body. As part of looking into this option, he would first want to give me an estrogen injection to see what my response to it would be as, if I didn't tolerate estrogen supplements, then it would make less sense to take the female route.

Either way, at the very least it sounded like I should have the testicles removed to be safe, even if I pursued nothing else.

This was a lot to think about and he recommended I should spend some time discussing it with my counselor. I agreed. In the meantime he asked if he could give me a B12 injection to see what my response would be to it. I saw no reason not to and he left his office to get it as I remained and mulled everything over.

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The Brass Ring

105

After losing a year in the hands of my first vocational rehabilitation counselor, I was very impressed with my new counselor, 'Greg'. Using his partnership with the University Of Colorado group, they had scheduled an appointment for me and a few other clients to be presented at 'Rocky Mountain Telecom'. RMT was one of the big winners with the break up of the national Bell Telephone company. They went from being a small regional telecommunications carrier to a full-on national long distance competitor. With their explosive growth they had recently taken over an abandoned IBM complex and not only made it their own, but were actively expanding it to house many more employees. Of the computer related jobs in Colorado, I saw this as the Brass Ring of success. If I got a job there, it would surely put the across the hayfield grocery store owner's wife's curse to rest: That I would end up as nothing more than a hot dog vendor.

The meeting set, we were to arrive at the VocRehab building a half hour before hand to be confirmed as being present and then taken to the facility in a van. Oddly enough I had been to the complex a year before as one of my old writers' group cohorts had landed the job of managing the building drawings as part of the takeover by RMT; he had given me and Jeff a tour of the then empty complex explaining the changes that were going to be made and the estimated number of people who would eventually work here. Pulling up in the van I could now see the front parking lot full of cars and the previously empty foyer now tight with security desks and electronic gates. We signed-in and then waited for our host to come and greet us and lead us to the conference room where we would meet with a selection of managers. To my surprise, the room wasn't more than a few hundred feet from the foyer and we were sat as a line behind a row of tables with the various RMT managers and lead employees scattered at the individual tables before us.

With no formal choreography to the proceeding, the University Of Colorado adviser introduced the representative of Vocation Rehabilitation who gave a quick speech of 'helping to find jobs for capable, if physically challenged, people and thus bringing success to us both'. Then he decided to have us introduce ourselves, briefly describing our physical challenges, and note our job goals and relevant experience. When it came to me, it turned out I didn't have to describe my physical challenges all that much as my stuttering was on full display. Normally in unusual circumstances I forget to stutter but perhaps sitting at a table rather than standing at a podium made me too comfortable and therefore the back of my mind was in full control of my attempts to talk. Still, I eventually got out my safety line, ''I'm sorry, I stutter occasionally,'' with a sheepish face and then talked briefly of my intestinal problems and of having recently recovered and looking for a computer programming job with near a decade of experience under my belt. I neglected to note that most of that experience had been unpaid volunteer work.

Once the rest of us had given their introduction we were asked a few questions... very few questions, and then the meeting was formally over and we could mill about with the employees in the room. Very few had questions for me, I hoped it was more a case of they were put off by my stuttering rather than concluding I wouldn't be a capable addition 'to the team'. Finally, on the way out of the conference room, one of the lead employees pulled me aside in the hallway and told me of her battle with Multiple Sclerosis and how supportive the company had been for her and it would make a great place for me to work at as well. Acknowledging this I got around to the question of if she had any jobs that might be a good fit for me. It turned out she had no role in the hiring process and had just attended the meeting based on her identifying with the topic given her own health issues. She was actually interested in talking to me more but they were loading the van and I was the last one to be rounded up. In retrospect I should have asked if I could stay and have her give me a tour of the building and, possibly, bump into coworkers who were involved in hiring. I could have taken the bus home on my own once done. But I didn't think of that idea and just did what I was told and returned to the van.

On the drive back, the University representative and VocRehab counselor thought it went well and expected callbacks for many, if not all of us, for job interviews...

As the subsequent weeks went by, no calls came.

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Hallways

104

Returning to College left me with decisions to be made, such as what I would wear. From my teenaged years until my emaciation, I had been wearing an ACE bandage to strap down my breasts and keep them hidden. After losing so much weight, along with muscle tissue, my breasts had shriveled down as well and I had simply spent my few days in public each week with my shoulders rolled forward to keep my tee shirt from revealing too much. I had grown to like not strapping myself down anymore at the start of each day. But now with my health restored, my breasts had returned to a cup size larger than my mother's and I once again needed to return to the hassle of cinching myself up before going out in public. I chaffed in more ways than one about this and decided I wanted a change.

Sports bras had since been developed and looking at them in a catalog I realized they could be a quick to put on solution to replace the ACE bandage. Ordering one two sizes too small, I received it in the mail and sure enough, it was much handier. The problem was, though, the shape of the shoulder straps were visible under a tee shirt. This obviously wouldn't do as I'd only be hiding one thing and in return make something else appear that would raise the same questions. If only I had tee shirts of a thicker material, then the straps might not show.

When Daina and I made our next weekend errand run around town, I told her of the problem but she didn't think that such 'thick' tee shirts existed. But still we looked and I finally spotted some women's long sleeved sweat shirts at a department store. It occurred to me to buy one and then cut and sew the sleeves to the shorter length. While it would have seemed easier just to wear the shirt with the existing long sleeves, since the age of sixteen I had been having these sudden short fevers a couple times each day and my bare arms had been my only way of radiating the heat. One of Daina's work friends had given her an old portable sewing machine years earlier and, while Daina didn't know how to use it, I had experience given my time in 'Home Ec' class from sixth grade. Sleeves shortened, sports bra on, I slipped it over my head and sure enough it was thick enough to hide the shoulder straps. The following week we returned to the department store and I got a sweat shirt of each color to then take home and modify for my needs. Daina didn't seem fully comfortable with this, I assumed from the excess of buying one of every color.

I now had my college uniform and returned to the halls to resume, and hopefully, complete my education.

Of my first set of classes, one of them was 'Public Speaking' and, given my great experience with the equivalent class in High School, I was looking forward to revisiting that success. And then there was 'Literature' which, as it turned out, featured many of the same short stories I had read for High School as well. That was the hardest of the classes for me to take as I was getting used to once again not having uninterrupted free time in my life and rereading familiar stories didn't seem like such a great use of that reduced time. Still, it had been over a decade since I had last gone through the texts and doubted I could request to test-out of the class and pass the Final cold. Eventually the teacher asked me about my frustration and I explained it, but neither of us could think of a solution other than going through the class and getting it over with.

As I had imagined, 'Public Speaking' was my favorite as, again at the podium, I'd forget to stutter and could impress my classmates with my ability to speak clearly. Then the break between the classes came and I was once again not able to talk about the weather because of the renewed stammering. One week in July, our next speech would be an 'extemporaneous speech' where we could not have notes with us, though we could chose the topic ahead of time to get our thoughts in order. I decided I'd do mine on the techniques I'd figured out during my emaciated years to hide the effect of my condition when out in public. But then the morning of the speech, something happened.

I received a call from Hollywood. It was a representative of 'The Other Show' and they had read my script and had really liked it. They liked it so much that they wanted to use it to introduce a new writer to the show and add them to their writing staff...

My head exploded with awe as not only had they liked my script and wanted to use it, they also wanted me to join the writing staff!!!!!!!!!!!

… And as they had already chosen who that new writer would be before they read my script, they were wondering if he could use its premise for his first teleplay.

It took me a moment to wrap my head around this concept. They wanted a new writer for the show and they had chosen one who apparently needed to use my idea as his introductory story as he couldn't, what, come up with his own...? I didn't ask this question, just thought about it silently.

''Are you still there?'' the representative asked me and I decided to play for time saying that I'd have to call my agent about it and ask her. ''You have an agent?'' came back the worried question. Yes I did, I confirmed without adding that she had already told me she wouldn't represent me on this script. He told me I could, of course, talk to her first but that I'd need to get back to them soon as they needed to move forward with the production of the show. I agreed I'd call back by the next day at the latest and then took his contact information.

The call over, I was shaking with mixed feelings and debated what to do. I checked the clock and I still had a half hour before I had to catch the bus to College and decided I might as well call my agent and get her advice. Digging up her home number I gave it a ring and this time her script writing husband answered. I asked to talk to her but was told she wasn't available and was asked what it was about. I told him and he was thrilled for me, but apologized as she was away on a trip to Las Vegas for the week and they wouldn't be in contact again until she returned. As that was well outside of the time frame 'The Other Show' wanted an answer, we concluded I would have to figure out whether to accept the offer on my own. I thanked him and the call was over.

I had just enough time to grab my books and run for the bus. On the ride toward the school I realized, with this excitement bubbling in my head, I had to expel some of it by changing the topic of my 'extemporaneous speech'. Arriving to class, I awaited my turn and then spoke about my news and my time writing with the show in mind and now I had gotten my chance to sell something. I skipped the detail of the sale being for another writer to use my work. And then I was off to my next class which I pensively waited to end so I could get back home and give Daina a call at the end of her work day.

Talking to Daina on the phone and telling her of the news, I realized that the amount of money they were offering me, though very low for a script sale, was still more than enough to pay for my initial appointment with the medical doctor knowledgeable in intersexed conditions. Based on that and the fact that my agent had previously told me she wouldn't be representing me on this script, I called back the Hollywood Rep before the end of the day and discussed the deal. As I had already made up my mind to accept the offer, I didn't see any point in having a sleepless night until calling him the following morning. He was still in the office and I told him I also wanted a name credit and, as I heard they were planning to develop a spin-off series, I asked for the Writer's Guidelines on that show as well as a copy of the pilot script as source material to work from for submissions to that show. No, they wouldn't give me a name credit as the goal was to allow their new writer to have his name only on his first show, and while they would agree to everything else concerning the spin-off series, they hadn't yet determined if they would have an open submission policy for that show as they had for the current show. I acknowledged that point and the deal was set.

Daina picked me up for a celebratory dinner.

Just before midnight my agent called. On a fluke she had called her husband to touch base and was thrilled about the news and was willing to represent me after all. I told her that I had already agreed to a deal but I'd be willing to have her represent me on my future efforts. She was pissed and demanded to know why I had gone ahead and made the deal without her. I pointed out the obvious, that I had been told she would be out of contact until the following week and that she had already told me she wouldn't represent me on the script. Then I added, simply, that I needed the money. ''Oh, you needed the money!'' she sarcastically echoed back and then slammed the phone down, hanging it up.

I then got a series of additional wordless phone calls and slamming hang-ups until one thirty in the morning...

A few weeks after the sale, the Hollywood representative called me back and said they 'had a slight problem'. Their new writer was having issues plotting out his take on my story and they were wondering if he could work from an outline of my script, not just with the premise. I said, ''Yes, in return for a name credit and a complementary copy of the final script,'' and added that I could have the outline printed-up mailed to them by the end of the day. He agreed to the name credit and script but added that they had already worked up the outline for him so I didn't need to mail one of my own. The updated deal was agreed to and I quickly called Daina with the news that my name would be on the show!

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