Departure

120

It was a Sunday evening that Daina and I parted ways. Given how much of our time together had been to share watching television shows, it seemed to make sense to end with the last new show until a span of repeats began.

Originally, I was shocked. When I told Daina of my 'situation' years earlier she had actually seemed enthusiastic about helping me research it and even lent me her car for my trips to see the specialist in Denver. But as time went on, she had become irritated and despondent and wouldn't say why. I just ended up assuming it was from the news of her mother's cancer and subsequent death. But now that I had contacted my family to let them know of my 'situation' and decision to normalize as female, the source of Daina's resentment toward me became clear: It was this decision. She wouldn't talk to me about it but finally agreed to join me to some visits with Samuel in the hopes that he could tease out the issues behind the resentments.

Daina and I sat side by side on his couch as he sat in the single chair across from us and gently prodded for what the issue might be. Finally Daina burst out that she didn't think I should be a woman as I made ''Animal Noises''. I burst out with an incredulous smile, fighting back the urge to break out laughing and fought to guess what she meant by that. Finally I did put two & two together and noted that, indeed, I sometimes would say ''meow'' to a cat, or ''woof'' to a dog, or ''moo'' to a cow, but I didn't see how that was a problem. Samuel turned to Daina and she wasn't going to explain it any further and the first of these three appointments soon came to an end with little more than Samuel getting some general information on Daina's background. Leaving his office I couldn't help myself and asked Daina, ''Animal Noises?'' She didn't want to talk about it or the session any further.

For the second visit, Daina had little to offer other than my height as to why I shouldn't choose to be a woman. That was easily addressed as I noted, because of my intersexed background, I had actually ended up a bit shorter than my mother and the same height as my sister. While in the transsexual field there had developed a race based conclusion of who should and who shouldn't change ''from a man to a woman'' based on how their height and weight fit into the idealized Caucasian norm, as I was from a mixed race background and, for that matter I was addressing an intersexed condition not a transsexual issue, that sort of gauge didn't seem relevant to me. Daina didn't have a response and the meeting was soon over without any new insights as to what was causing her irritation about my decision.

During this time I had gotten my RMT job offer and accepted it and Vocational Rehabilitation actually paid for cab fare to take me to and from the complex each day I worked for the first two weeks until I received my first paycheck and could use it as a down payment for my own a car. As a result, between dinners and Daina helping me decide on my business wear wardrobe, we would visit various used car lots in search of a car I might like. During these times it had become the rule that we were not to talk of the cause of her irritation until our next appointment with Samuel. So the irritation just persisted creating a wall between us as the weeks wore on. We finally found a car for me, but as I had only just started a new job after years of being unemployed, I couldn't get financing for it on my own and Daina finally agreed to cosign my car loan so, if for any reason I stopped making payments for it, Daina would be on the hook for the balance and the financing company would feel safe. I thanked her, but she saw my getting a car as a means of us spending less tense time together in her car.

By the third meeting the dam broke at Samuel's office:

When Daina had first met me she had been with a coworker friend, 'Rochelle', and as Rochelle was the extroverted one of the pair, she befriended me first. Given Rochelle's comely appearance and her propensity to talk of her many past boyfriends as conquests, her limited presence in my life had lead people to believe I had chosen her as a girlfriend and thus this had given me 'a reputation'. While the friendship with Rochelle didn't last long, she had then started listing me at Daina's & her workplace as one of her past boyfriends, thus giving me 'a reputation' at their school in the rumor mill as well. Daina saw this as her chance to establish her own 'reputation' as she had never had a boyfriend of her own, nor had even been on a real date for fear of ending up in a relationship like her parents had during her lifetime.

By befriending me, Daina had been leading her school friends to believe we were an intimate couple over these past few years. Then when I told her of my 'situation' Daina had come to realize that God had sent me to her. In her mind I truly was that 'perfect boyfriend for her'. We had so many interests in common and given my physical 'limitations' she would never have to worry about me wanting anything of her sexually that she was uncomfortable facing. So for me, while we had been friends these past few years and she had been helping me out as I regained my health and tried to reclaim my life, to her friends she had portrayed me as her boyfriend having fresh stories of our frequent times together doing stuff and letting her coworkers and family assume more was happening 'after hours'.

That was why Daina was against my normalizing as female as: What would she tell her friends? Her family? That nothing had been going on all along and she had been intentionally misleading them? Of course she couldn't. Daina originally thought that when I looked into my intersexed 'situation' it would result in my finding ways to become 'more of a man', but once it was clear that wasn't going to happen, Daina wanted me to remain as I had been living my life since the age of thirteen, bound and pretending to be a man as best I could, that way I would continue to ''be the man'' in her life.

I told her after so many years of already living my life that way, I definitely didn't want to spend the rest of it like that as well. Drawing from her wealth of classical readings, Daina tried to point out that ''Your life story makes such a great classical tragedy. Why would you want to give that up and have a life just like everyone else?''

I was speechless as was Samuel and when the end of the appointment came Daina made her way back to the car while Samuel held me back for a moment. He recommended I end my friendship with Daina as soon as possible...!

But I still felt we could work it out. Daina could just let it come out to her friends and coworkers that we weren't 'a couple' but 'just friends' during these years but that wasn't what Daina wanted to do. She liked the reputation she had gained in their eyes. As the subsequent weeks went on, she further explained to me that another reason she didn't want me as a 'female' friend in her life was because all of her female friends had subsequently found a boyfriend and coupled up, leaving Daina behind, forgotten. She couldn't bear the thought that I might, also, find myself a boyfriend 'afterwards' and not only would she be left behind, again, but having come from a mixed-sex background be ''more successful being a woman'' than she had been during her lifetime.

While I told her I didn't have any dating goals in mind, I also wasn't willing to swear I would never be open to them in the future. With that, Daina concluded for herself that we needed to end our friendship and while I tried to comfort and assure her it wouldn't be an issue, her slowly welling hostility toward me made it clear that the past fun of our friendship was going to disappear either way and I finally relented and agreed to the end.

After finishing our final television show for the night, I followed Daina out to her car and we chatted for a bit and then I thanked her for all of her help and support over these past many years I had known her. Given how she had fed me and helped me when my apartment had been destroyed as well as assuring I was able to go back to College and frequently provided me rides as part of it so I could complete my degree, I thanked her for ''saving my life'' as my final words to her. That seemed to coax a smile out of her for the first time in months and she got into her car and started it while I made my way back to my apartment.

I moved to my bedroom window and opened the curtains to watch her car drive by... And she was gone. I stood there for a while looking to the grassy vacant lot beyond the parking lot for a time and it dawned on me I was back to my childhood place starting out my sister's bedroom window to the hayfield beyond, waiting for the time when she would come back and see me again.

But in this case I knew Daina never would.

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Notifying The Family

118

After three months of my resumes being out and no jobs being offered, I decided I needed to move on with my personal life. Given the success of the hormone treatments I had been having during the past two years, I decided that the best long term decision for me would be to 'normalize' my sex as female. As part of this decision, Samuel recommended I let my family members know and thus have a good measure of which ones would be supportive and which ones wouldn't be. Ultimately I had no problem with this as, since I hadn't felt a high level of support from my family over the decades, I really wasn't worried if the intermittent contact I had with them was the only victim. Of my family members, I assumed that my father and mother would cut contact with me for sure, but I saw that more as a relief than a problem, so it was a question of which of my siblings might cut contact with me, themselves.

Daina didn't like the idea at all and felt I should wait until I found a new job and saved money for a few years and then decide how to lead my personal life. As jobs weren't immediately apparent, I didn't agree with her.

I spent a week crafting a common letter for all my immediate family members. I noted my years of having 'an issue', lightly giving some of the physical details but avoiding anything that would cause someone to abruptly stop reading, and then ended the letter with my decision to live the rest of my life as female. I then took this base letter and made five variations for each member with a touch of personalization. I printed and reread them just to be sure and then added my signature to each and mailed them off by the end of September, Nineteen Ninety-Four.

As no surprise my father again disowned me, having my eldest brother call me to let me know. For his part though, my eldest brother didn't have a problem with it. My sister didn't have a problem with it either, though surprisingly my not as older brother wrote back a letter saying he felt it was a 'betrayal'. His point was that, if mother had told me to keep it a secret for all of these years, I should have continued with that. Then he noted, upon reflection and after discussing it with my eldest brother, he had decided to 'forgive me' and accept my decision.

To my shock, my mother's reaction was the most extreme: She was fully supportive.

At the time I was thrown for a loop by this as I had been planning on not having to hear from her again. But in retrospect, after being the only family member to care for her when she had fractured her pelvis, she had concluded that she had to stay on my good side and keep me available in her life in case anything else happened where she would need help. That's my interpretation of her response. But what she did was want to know the details and started to send me frequent holiday cards in the vein of 'To My Darling Daughter, --'. When a friend later saw these, he thought she was being sarcastic with the cards, but I thought she was just over compensating for all the years since she had told me to keep my 'situation' a secret.

With notifying family members out of the way, I decided to verbally notify my friends in town. Of those friends, the ones I was most fearful of losing would be the one's who had supported the anti-Gay rights 'Amendment 2' in Colorado. It turned out I didn't have to worry. All of my friends who were still in contact with me had chosen to know me given my 'personality, talents, and interests', not based on my gender. So for them they just saw this as another interesting facet of the person that was me. The one friend I feared losing the most was my long time friend in Colorado, Jeff, as a few years earlier a member of the Denver science fiction club had come out as a transsexual and Jeff soon stopped attending their meetings with her there. But when I brought it up to him, he noted that it wasn't the club member coming out as a transsexual that had lead him to leave the club, but that she had then spent the rest of her time at the subsequent club meetings as an ardent feminist, taking the club off of its focus of science fiction & fantasy interests. So Jeff's only concern was if I was going to be undergoing a 'change in personality' as well as legal sex. I assured him I wasn't. I was just going to be the same person with a different letter on my driver's license. That was fine with him.

Given that I had been out of contact with my high school friends for years, I decided not to bother tell them as I felt it would only end up as grist for High School Reunions to take place years later. Otherwise, I didn't see the point.

When I reported to Samuel of the news of notifying my family and friends and how it had gone, he was pleased and, in fact, very surprised that there hadn't been any fall out with anyone I knew and cared about. I agreed and even joked wistfully that, yes, even my mother hadn't cut contact with me!

As time went on, I did lose contact with some of these Colorado friends, but it was due to the normal drift of life interests and nothing to do with my legal change of gender. Of my Colorado friends, there was only one who I lost: Daina.

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My Role

114

My life was in a gentle arc of finishing the last year of College classes before I'd have my long sought after Bachelors degree. In Nineteen Ninety-Three very little happened in my life to disturb this gentle conclusion to my college years. But that doesn't mean the time wasn't without some tidbits...

One summer day Daina thought it would be easier if I just drove myself home from her condo that evening and then pick her up the next afternoon for errands rather than making the trip both ways herself. That made sense to me and I drove to my apartment complex and parked behind my bedroom window and settled in for the night. The next morning I got up, cleaned up, and dressed and looked out my apartment back window to check the weather. While the weather was fine, I realized Daina's car was gone! Not knowing how to respond to this, I decided to go to the complex's manager and ask him for his advice. He winced when I told him the news and explained that late last night the parking lot had been filled with cars that he suspected were for the next door jazz club. So he called up a towing company and in the darkness of night had them tow away all the cars he didn't recognize. This next day, a number of tenants had been coming to him to ask where their cars were. As with them, he handed me enough money from petty cash to pay for the car to be released from the tow lot and gave me the address. I checked the address inside my apartment against the bus route map and there were no buses that went to that end of town. How was I supposed to get Daina's car back?

Sheepishly calling Daina and telling her the story, I wondered if one of her work friends could play chauffeur for us to collect her car, while I had the release money and car key, I also feared the tow yard might not release the car to me as it was in Daina's name. She called a friend who was free and gave her a ride and soon after picked me up and we got Daina's car back and took her friend out for breakfast as payment.

Always wanting to approach problems in a constructive manner, I returned to the manger and said that, since I had experience with desktop publishing, I could create parking tags for him to pass out to the tenants and then he would be better able to tell which cars belonged in the parking lot and which ones didn't. He though that was a great idea and all I asked for in return was the cost of getting them printed. He agreed and I went to work on my computer and came up with a design that he liked and the problem was soon solved. Having gotten to know me better, he asked me where I worked out. Worked out? I asked. He said he could tell I was a body builder since I wore a sweat tee shirt and he was thinking of building up his muscles as well. I noted that I didn't go to a club but 'worked out' at home.

This was funny. As with my notebook in High School, now my attempt to hide my breasts during my final college years had 'over achieved' and people mistook my sports bra strapped down breast as prominent pectoral muscles, despite my long hair tied as a tail. I'd cut the sleeves down on the sweat shirts which I used to hide the sports bra straps, I guess people assumed those short sleeves hid the otherwise nonexistent bulging muscles of my upper arms? One time a female teacher in one of my classes called for our nightly mid-class break, she quickly made her way to the door out, but then stopped with a group of girls waiting by the door for some reason. As I got from the back of the class to the door to leave she burst into laughter as if someone had told her a joke, though I hadn't seen any of them talking at the time. She leaned forward and supported herself momentary from 'the laughter' by resting her hand on the left side of my chest. Once I got to the cafeteria and thought about it, I felt this was a staged moment and could only guess that the teacher wanted to cop-a-feel of my 'pectoral muscle' to see how firm it was. As it was my breast strapped down by the sports bra a couple of sizes too small, I wondered what she reported to the girls who had gathered by her once I left the room?

When I had returned to College the previous year, I was greeted by the half American/half German girl who handled the reception desk at the office when otherwise not in a class herself. Over the years I would chat with her from time to time when I'd visit the office. One evening when I was chatting with her during the class break, she suddenly brought up the topic about 'all of those minorities around ruining the country' while eying me intently. Given my Native American mixed race background, I decided not to bring that up and instead simply shrugged my shoulders and replied, ''I hadn't thought about that.'' She didn't continue with the topic and with the way she had looked at me intently at the time I wasn't sure if she was trying to figure out if 'I was a body builder' because I was a secret White Supremacist, or if she herself was one and had been trying to see if I'd make a good recruit? I hoped it wasn't the latter as, given her half German ancestry, that would have been a sad commentary that there were still problems in Germany despite how World War II had turned out. Either way, I reduced my subsequent visits with her to only the few times I needed to ask her about an office related question.

With Fall, came the obligatory 'Psychology 101' class. I was actually looking forward to taking it as, with my years seeing Jude and then Samuel, I felt like a psychology acolyte as much of the time they would be giving me pointers on how to assess troubled people and help to calm them down if they were having a problem relating to me and my ambiguous nature. Arriving at the first day of the class, this new instructor flat out told us that, rather than going through the book and teaching us about psychology, he was going to 'teach us to be good Christians as that was the only thing we needed to know for good mental health'. Then once he was done with that he would briefly go through the book at the end of the semester to point out all of the flaws in the 'secular humanist psychological philosophy'. When break came, I went straight to the office to withdraw from the class and transfer to the daytime version taught by one of the instructors I already knew and respected. That paperwork done, I went to the cafeteria for the rest of my break.

When I left there I was spotted by one of the staff and asked to return to the office. In there was the rest of my 'Psychology 101' classmates and they, too, had decided to drop the night class and look into joining the day class. Given that the College would no longer have the minimum number of students left in the night class to pay for the instructor to be there, they were instead going to replace him by the following week and didn't want any of us to transfer out. We agreed and I returned to the classroom to retrieve my books and then left the teacher to watch me leave for the rest of the night. I wondered if he was aware of what was going on at the office...?

Had the other students been following my lead, or had all of us deciding to drop the class at the same time been a coincidence given the attitude of the instructor? In this case, rather than pet my already over inflated ego, I've assumed it was a coincidence.

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Time With Samuel

113

Seeing Samuel was a huge ego boost for me. After years of no support and harassment at the hands of medical doctors and other psychology professionals, he was completely supportive of my 'situation' and my desire to look into and resolve it.

During our first sessions, he asked about my previous experiences with psychological professionals and I told him of the psychologist who'd I first seen during my four day hospital stay in Nineteen Eighty-Seven, which was a good experience, and then the times with the mental health social worker 'Stella Hernandez' who had spent the sessions telling me about her life and problems rather than the other way around, my experiences with the Vocational Rehabilitation psychologist and his bizarre technique & findings, and my brief time with the counselor whose office was at the other hospital in town who denied I had even had a sister and who desperately wanted to find records of a nonexistent time I was in a mental institution. Samuel noted that often times people go into the psychological field to learn about their own issues rather than with the goal of helping others in mind and as a result they will often spend their time using patients as blank slates for their own use.

In my case Samuel felt I made the perfect blank slate given my ambiguous racial background as well as my biologically ambiguous sex and tendency to be initially quiet when meeting people given my stuttering. He could see many people filling in that initial question mark of who and what I was with what was going on in their own minds rather than taking me as I truly was. I noted the many times I had people see me and blow up about things I knew nothing about but they thought I was guilty of; and also of the times when people would see me and suddenly feel I was the right person to unburden themselves about dark matters in their lives.

Samuel agreed that these occurrences fit into his 'blank slate' theory. Some people saw me as a way to externalize their own neuroses, in the case of things people didn't like about themselves they would paint them onto me. In the case of people who needed to unburden themselves, they could imagine me as the person they needed to confess to as there was nothing definitive about me to dissuade them and also, seeming to appear outside of the social norm, I wasn't perceived as a threat that would, or socially could, judge them for their confession. He noted that often times people of any particular majority would often feel more comfortable telling secret things to people of a perceived minority as 'if it ever got out' they could use the person's minority status as a reason why that information shouldn't be given credence.

I mentioned a time when someone said they believed I could 'read peoples souls', Samuel returned that it was people's reactions to me that gave me the insight into other peoples' souls. In many ways I was like a walking-taking Rorschach Test for some people.

As part of coming up to speed about me, Samuel requested to get the records of my neuropsychological evaluation from 'Dr. Maverick'. I agreed though pointed out my past experiences that doctors would use those contacts to verbally pass on B.S. about me to other professionals. He said we could give it a try and see what happens. I signed the paperwork and he sent off for the records. When they arrived he told me that while she might have told me verbally that my pain in the left side of my head and subsequent permanent deficit in February of Nineteen Eighty-Nine 'might have been a stroke' she had noted it affirmatively in her records, so the diagnosis stood. He then told me a few sessions later that 'Dr. Maverick' was having to move her practice out of town and she was now disavowing that diagnosis in order to avoid further trouble with the Colorado Medical community.

Still, from her records Samuel confirmed my genius I.Q. level and explained to me that my score meant I was 'at or above the doctorate level in most subject areas'. He clarified that it was 'at or above' as the tests were standardized to the doctorate level and since I had maxed out in so many areas, for all we knew I was above the doctorate level and they simply couldn't detect that with the test. I joking asked him if that was why I had so many problems with medical doctors, since the saying was 'doctors make the worst patients' and I was 'at the doctorate level'. We laughed at that and then he confirmed it might be the case as I was sharp enough to sometimes see through the doctors' actions and realize they weren't making logical sense in what they were doing or saying.

He asked if I wouldn't mind taking one of his own favored psychological tests and I agreed. When the results came back, it found me to be normal BUT that it flagged that I seemed to be hiding negative information about myself. When we discussed what that might mean I noted the handful of questions it had asked about presumed past sexual partners and resulting problems with them. As I had never had any sexual partners I therefore reported never having problems with them. Just to see, we picked one of those questions and changed the answer to 'have had a problem with' and reran the results. The following meeting he affirmed that the test now found me to be normal without any reservations. We concluded the test should be updated not to assume everyone taking it had been sexually active beforehand.

When the topic reached to my mixed-sex 'situation' it ultimately came down to first making sure I was fully aware of the social pluses & minuses of each gender role, and helping me deal with other people who were uncomfortable with me given my ambiguity and possible future choices. In the case of gender roles he felt I had a pretty good handle on them as I had started to observe and consider the differences since my surprise puberty at age thirteen. In the case of helping people it was more of the same sort of 'unofficial psychological counseling pointers' that Jude had given me for dealing with medical doctors, to first calm any situation down as much as possible and then spend time asking questions to bring into the open the source of the other person's discomfort and discuss it.

When it came to what choice I would make, as Dr. 'Czarniecki' concluded that I couldn't be biologically any more 'a man' than I already was, and the trial estrogen injections had made the sudden fevers I had been experiencing during the previous decade of my life go away, it seemed a simple choice to me to consider normalizing as female. That decision would have been much harder for me if we had still been in nineteen fifties America with its strict and confining life choices women had in that day and age, but by the nineteen nineties women had made huge strides toward equality in America. What level of discrimination that was left seemed little different to what I had already faced with my mixed-race background and life long stuttering. When it came to seeing medical doctors, I couldn't imagine things being worse than what I had already experienced with them while being intersexed. On that point, Samuel agreed.

As women more often than not had longer hair than men, Samuel recommended I grow out my hair and see if I liked having it that way...

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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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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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Research & Dead Ends

100

The one thing I hadn't expected when I told Daina of my mixed-sex background was enthusiasm. I guessed it was more a case of she was thrilled to finally have someone she could share dark family secrets with, rather than her being happy about my 'situation'. But I was happy to accept it versus the many other unhappy results I had imagined. From her classical studies, she told me of two examples of similar people she knew of who seemed to have the same physical issues as I did: Akhenaten, and Siddhartha Gautama. Both had become religious reformers, and one of them didn't end up so successfully at it. I didn't know what to make of her comparisons, but it already left me feeling more like an underachiever.

Akhenaten was an Egyptian pharaoh circa 1352 BCE who was revolutionary in that he insisted on Egypt leaving behind its polytheistic history and become a monotheistic society with the Aten, also known as Ra-Horus, as its god. While he pushed the movement as he lived, once he died it was abandoned and Egypt returned to its polytheistic beliefs. Having reigned seventeen years he was distinguished by his feminine-like appearance and is over shadowed by his better known son, Tutankhamun. Though, if he and I truly shared the same 'situation', I'd be hard pressed to see how he could have been a biological father.

Siddhartha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the ancient Shakya republic of the continent of India. More of a personal enlightenment philosophy than a deity based religion, his teachings are roughly that suffering is a part of existence and that suffering is in part caused by one's own desires. One of his tenets, that teachings should not be accepted unless borne out by one's own experience, seemed to echo my own life's lessons. His teachings eventually coalesced into Buddhism and has been a more enduring belief system. While some depictions of him reveal a feminine styled body, these depictions may just be culturally based as I wasn't able to find any notes about a possible mixed-sexed background.

Soon after I told Daina of my 'situation' she wanted to go to the library and look up all the information she could. She invited me along and I forewarned her that the few times I had tried over the years I had found very little, if any information. Still, I was game to try again and she picked me up at my apartment.

When we arrived at the largest branch of the library we combed the catalog for books without luck, then she checked for recent magazines and found an article on 'pseudo-hermaphrodites'. The magazine article focused on how Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome 'X/Y' genetic women were often deemed to make the most desirable looking women and noted that some of them had often found jobs as models or even as Hollywood actresses. While the article as a whole didn't go into as much medical detail as I would have liked, it did give me a new term to keep in mind: Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Also finding the article seemed to make Daina satisfied, joking that perhaps my mixed-sex background was why I had been so interested in selling television scripts to Hollywood.

My sessions with my new psychologist, Samuel, had reached the point that it was time to hunt for a doctor which could medically evaluate my 'situation' and make suggestions and give me advice on it. Too often being intersexed was deemed to be a plumbing issue and many urological surgeons touted themselves as the doctors to see about it. But ultimately all they did was perform surgery to 'clarify' the plumbing but otherwise seemed to have little interest or knowledge of the total, lifelong, ramifications. We did finally find a general practitioner who was not wholly specialized in the intersexed field, as those doctors were very few and far between, but had become aware of it and come up to speed on the various issues over time while helping an initial patient he already knew. He had since gained a positive reputation when handling such issues and with his name I was able to find his contact information. I gave his office a call to discover the steep 'initial evaluation fee' and the lack of insurance coverage for it. While my latest apartment had a significantly lower rent than my previous apartment, allowing me greater flexibility in my finances, I realized I would still have to save for at least the whole year before I'd have enough money for the visit, assuming I didn't have any drop in my income in the meantime.

Yet what else could I do on this other than save that money, bit by bit, over the months or years to come?

I let Samuel know that my telling Daina of my 'situation' had gone well and he asked if I was going to tell anyone else. I decided I wasn't until I had the medical consultation and thus gained a better idea of how I would address my 'situation' before telling more of my friends. He thought that made sense and we reduced our appointments to once every month or two to keep in touch until I could go forward and make the evaluation appointment...

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Display

97

Just about six months since I had started seeing my new psychologist, 'Samuel', we had discussed at length my mixed-sex 'situation', what it meant to me personally and what it meant to the world socially and we both agreed that I was emotionally prepared to look into the medical part of my 'situation' and find what my options were for addressing it. One area of concern was outside support. While it was all good to have him on my side, I really should have someone in my social life aware of the 'situation' and be supportive as well. As my family members weren't an option, all of them living hundreds if not thousands of miles away except for my mother, and she had been the one who insisted I keep my 'situation' a secret and not tell anyone, I guessed I'd have to find someone else.

With March Nineteen Ninety-Two it was starting to get warm enough for Daina and I to once again go hiking in the nearby mountains and parks. Given how well our friendship had developed over the years, I decided I would tell her on one of our hikes. When we arrived at the foothills of the nearest mountain I realized, with the effort of hiking up and down the paths, that it wouldn't be conducive to a good discussion and also lack privacy given the occasional other hikers we would pass by on the trail. So I waited until we were getting back to the car and then let Daina know I wanted to talk to her about something. Apparently Daina had noticed my contemplative quietness during the hike and concluded that something was up and I had now confirmed it -- To her fears. Back in the car, Daina decided to start it and begin driving though that hadn't been my plan. Sure enough, with Daina paying attention to the twists & turns of the mountain side road, it didn't feel like the right atmosphere for the discussion and I asked her to find somewhere to pull aside so we could talk. She decided this meant she needed to drive faster, but I finally insisted she stop at the next overlook pull-off and she reluctantly did.

''What!'' was her prompt to me once we stopped and she shut off the car. While not an ideal beginning to the topic, I felt it was the best I was going to get to talk to her about my 'situation'. Let's face it, when is a good time to bring up something like that? And so I decided to start from the beginning with puberty where boys begin to become men and girls begin to become women and in my case it was 'pretty much a mixed bag'. This attempt to ease into the subject only brought a confused look so I decided to be more explicit that I had been a boy but when I turned thirteen, parts of me developed as a woman while the male parts of me withered a bit and I had only developed a few speckles of beard but nothing else. ''So you're saying you wanted to be a woman?'' she guessed, still not grasping the situation. No, not necessarily, I returned, it was a case of my body, physically, not knowing what it should be and I was seeing a doctor to figure it out.

She was clearly perplexed and asked a few questions which lead me to believe she still wasn't understanding what I was trying to explain to her. This was before the time when I had come up with that succinct line I thought I was a boy but when puberty came I got a big surprise. Perhaps I came up with this line after my much more wordier attempt to explain it to Daina hadn't been very effective. She didn't seem to want to talk about it any further and I couldn't figure out what else to say on my end of the conversation. So she restarted the car and we continued driving to her place. Once we were there, she brought up the topic again but it was still clear that she was thinking this was an emotional 'feeling' I was talking about not a physical occurrence. So I decided just to lift up my tee shirt, unclip the ACE bandage strapping me down and pull it free, letting my boobs drop out. She stood there mute for a moment then turned away. ''Never do that, ever again,'' she said in a solemn voice and I left for her bathroom to cinch myself back up.

When I came back into the condo's combination dining room/living area, Daina decided she should just take me back to my apartment for the rest of the day as she needed to think. I felt this was bad news, but didn't want to stir up any more resentments by trying to force the topic on her any further. It was a quiet drive back and I told her to give me a call later when she wanted to talk more. I got out of the car and she just as quietly left. I watched her drive away uncertain if I'd ever hear from her again.

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End Of The Line

95

After the disappointment of my first four speculative scripts sent into 'The Other Show' not gaining their acceptance, I decided my problem was 'pushing the envelope' too far with each one I had written. When the show had first started it had some issues and needed to have its envelope pushed in my humble opinion. But by the third season they had finally come into their own and I decided to craft a script that would be completely common place and unthreatening. After typing it up I passed it around to some friends as my test readers and I got back less enthusiastic responses than I normally did: Just as I had hoped. I mailed it off to the agent feeling this was the one that was going to sell!

Jude's and my relationship seemed to be coming to an end. While he had been a great help to me during my time having issues with medical doctors not performing their jobs, he since had little he wanted to do other than find me that 'perfect doctor' to handle my long term needs. Yet when I said I was interested in a doctor who could address my mixed-sex issues, he didn't like that idea at all and I ended up starting to see a different psychologist on the side for those questions. It turned out he knew my new psychologist, 'Samuel', and had good things to say about him and even had a nice supportive chat with him about me. In the meantime Jude and my appointments had gone from being twice monthly to once every few months and I was thinking we would end as I focused on working with Samuel. But at what I assumed would be that final appointment where we would discuss parting, he had some news for me that he was thrilled about. He had found that perfect doctor to serve as my long term primary care physician, 'Dr. Klasper'. The wrinkle was Dr. Klasper was in Florida, but he would be willing to work on my needs over the phone, Jude was certain! I expressed misgivings about this but Jude assured me that he knew this would be just the doctor for me. He gave me the phone number and told me I could call him that evening and check for myself.

When I got home, I decided to give it a try as Jude had been a big help and supporter of mine over these past two & a half years I had seen him. But when I called, I was very surprised. I asked Klasper what specialty he was in, he admitted that technically he didn't have a medical degree, but was just called 'Dr. Klasper' as an honorary title by his patients. In reality he was a personal trainer who worked at a health club in Florida but also did phone consultations. How much was a phone consultation? I asked. He said it was two hundred dollars an hour, no insurance accepted, and his price was firm. As my entire non-rent money supply was about seventy-five dollars a month at that time, it was impossible for me to afford his fee. Thankfully, this gave me a conclusive reason not to take him as my 'doctor' and when I next saw Jude I told him of the phone call and what I'd learned.

Having expected that Jude and I would part amicably at the previous appointment, now Jude became enraged by what I told him of my call and said it wasn't possible and I was lying. I told him he could call and check for himself if he didn't believe me. But he assured me he didn't have to call as he had already seen the 'video tape'. Video tape? Yes, he had been passed a video tape noting Dr. Klasper's skills and extensive knowledge of health problems.

In the early Nineteen Nineties many 'businesses' and 'professionals', whose claims couldn't be legally validated well enough to be touted in broadcast advertisements, had taken up making 'informational videos' of themselves and their claims and then distributed these tapes through a network of supporters. It turned out Jude had been passed one of these video tapes by ''someone he trusted.'' And as he'd seen that tape for himself, Jude didn't feel the need to question anything he had gleaned from it.

When I again assured Jude of what Klasper had told me directly on the phone, Jude told me I didn't know what I was talking about and I should give 'Dr. Klasper' a try. I assured him with the two hundred dollar price tag for each consultation, I couldn't afford him even if I wanted to. Jude felt that surely 'Dr. Klasper' would bring down his price if I told him of my circumstances. I noted that I had and Klasper was very firm on his price. Jude told me it couldn't possibly be true.

Our time was up and neither he nor I saw any reason for a subsequent visit. As our last appointment, it had been very acrimonious and the first time that we had exchanged any cross words to each other. I thought it was a shame, but he felt he didn't need to check the facts himself, I just needed to get different answers.

With this disappointment already in my mind, I soon after received a letter from my agent lambasting me for how disappointing my most recent script had been. She stated I needed to learn ''the basic tenets of good writing'' before I sent her any more scripts. She then concluded her letter by noting that, if I really wanted to, I could of course always submit the script myself. When I called to assure her that I had specifically designed the script to make it as comfortable for the show readers as I could and was sure it would sell, she told me that clearly that wasn't the case as why would they want to buy something so poor? When I asked her what she had meant by ''the basic tenets of good writing'' she scoffed as she thought this meant I didn't know of the 'Man versus Man', 'Man versus Society', 'Man versus Nature' and 'Man versus Himself'' underpinnings of narrative story structure. When I noted that my story fit 'Man versus Society' she assured me it didn't as my story focused on an 'Android' and not a 'Man'. When I told her that the 'Android' in question was one of the major characters of the show and they routinely featured stories centered around him, she assured me I didn't know what I was talking about and it didn't matter as she wasn't going to represent me as my agent with that script. She then echoed in a sarcastic tone what she had written at the end of her letter, that I could always send it in on my own if I wanted to, but she assured me they wouldn't look at it. The call was done. It didn't occur to me until afterwards that given her strict interpretation of what qualified as 'Man versus...' for a valid story, then all stories about women and children would be deemed invalid by her logic as well.

Not only had my relationship with Jude ended, it seemed like my relationship with my agent was over as well.

The next time I saw Samuel and discussed these two occurrences he told me that Jude had gone even further than just having a bad last appointment with me, he had now joined the old chorus of medical doctors disparaging me on the grapevine and claiming I never had any 'real' medical problems... Samuel quipped that it might be nearing the time when Jude would have to renew his medical license and wanted to ensure a conflict-free process with his peers.

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