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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Thanksgiving

92

As a surprise gift my not as older brother, who was currently stationed in Washington, D.C., sent my mother and me airplane tickets to join him and his family for Thanksgiving. Now with his second wife and two daughters of his own, he wanted to have a full family Thanksgiving to fill their new townhouse. He also roped in my eldest brother and his wife to join us! While I had seen my not as older brother off & on over the years when he'd visit my mother during some of his leave time, I hadn't seen my eldest brother since leaving New England over eight years earlier. Adding to my anticipation my high school friend, Luke, had also moved to Washington, D.C., with his longtime girl friend as he had taken up a job with the Library Of Congress.

I knew my other high school friend, Van, had visited him from time to time there and pulled out his old home phone number and gave his family a call. I reached his mother and reintroduced myself to her after all the years and then asked if I could have Van's current phone number. She was willing and I was off to call Van. To my surprise I immediately reached him and chatted with him briefly. This was our first chat since his confessional phone call to me so many years earlier. I told him the news of going to Washington and asked him if he had Luke's current phone number and if perhaps he might have the chance to come down to D.C. himself for a small reunion. While he felt the whole idea was fun, he declined and said he couldn't. And for that matter he didn't seem interested in talking about his life either, but he was willing to give me Luke's phone number and wished me the best of luck. I gave him my apartment phone number should he ever want to call me sometime and catch up and he said he might.

Calling Luke, he seemed happy by the news I'd be in town and confirmed that we could meet and catch up on life, perhaps even having dinner. I was thrilled and then realized I'd probably need to pull out a bit of money from my checking account's line of credit to afford side items during the trip. Not ideal, but given this once in a lifetime circumstance I wasn't going to hesitate. As Irony would have it, after a year since the antibiotics, I was back to my ideal weight and my very balded head had sprouted a carpet of fresh hair so when I saw Luke I wouldn't look that much different from the last time he saw me eight years earlier.

Daina agreed to look in on my place while I was gone and get my mail and she gave me a ride to my mother's where we picked her up on the day of the flight. Daina dropped us off at the little local airport and stayed with us until we boarded. The flight would connect with Denver's Stapleton airport where we would then get on a direct flight to D.C.. Even though we had an hour & a half layover in Denver, as a side thought once we got off the small hop plane I suggested we confirm the departure time of our next flight. It turned out it had been canceled due to mechanical problems, but they would be able to get us squeezed into an earlier flight that was leaving in ten minutes. With a brief stop at a payphone to let my not as older brother know we'd be early, we rushed to the gate number and boarded the plane as the last passengers, ending up with separated seat assignments.

When we arrived at D.C., he met us and we went to the baggage area to retrieve our luggage only to find it hadn't made the flight given the sudden change of plans, it was still in Denver awaiting assignment to a future flight. The airline took my brother's address & phone number and told us they'd deliver our bags once they arrived at the airport. We were out of the building and onto the famous 'beltway' highway for the next hour or so until we reached my not as older brother's new place. Along the way he pointed out various beltway adjacent sites to us and even pulled off for a bit to drive us around the Pentagon where he now served. As my eldest brother & wife had arrived the day earlier, we were already prepped for a full family dinner. I found out our tentative plan of events for the week and then called Luke to let him know and better firm up our own visit plans.

The first day our family spent unwinding from our flight and seeing the local sights, visiting the local mall and returning to the townhouse for Chinese take-out and to await the over a day delayed delivery of our luggage. The next day was dedicated to visiting the National Mall, seeing the various monuments and spending the afternoon at the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum. Of all the wings of the Smithsonian, I think they chose the Air & Space Museum for me and I'm very thankful for it. The next day was dedicated to the Thanksgiving meal itself, with a nighttime drive back and around the capital to see it bathed in golden lights. Friday was a routine day of visiting and each family member doing various errand runs before we again gathered for a meal at an Italian restaurant, and then me itching furiously from the apparent red food coloring #3 in the sauce as we went out to see a movie. The following day was a quick drive up to and around Baltimore before we dropped off my eldest brother & his wife for their flight from the Baltimore/Washington airport. Sunday we gathered our belongings and were off to Dulles airport for our own flight home.

We didn't have any family conflict until Thanksgiving day itself.

Asking my eldest brother about all that had changed in New England since I had left I found out he now had a computer of his own, which was novel to me as I had originally been the only family member with a computer, and then I expressed surprise as well that our rural neck of the woods now had cable television! ''WE AREN'T A BUNCH OF BACKWARDS HICKS!'' my eldest brother snapped at me in reaction to my surprise. I was stunned by this as, for me, New England hadn't changed in my mind since I'd left it eight years earlier. I was delighted by all this news, so I was shocked that he took offense at my questions and tried to apologize.

Later in the afternoon, mother felt the need to bring up her ceaseless retelling of the time she dislocated her knee and how she was alone with me and I just stood there throwing rocks at her as she lay helpless on the ground writhing in pain. A story which she had first started telling in front of me soon after we moved to the New England apartment in Nineteen Seventy-Five, she seemed compelled to tell it to any new friend I might bring home. As I was too young at the time to know for myself what had happened, I had come up with the defense of pointing to the small brown birthmark on her forehead and saying, ''That's where she got that bruise from,'' as my only way of shielding myself from the story.

Given that she had a new audience to tell this story to, my not as older brother's wife and two kids, she couldn't help herself and told it again. As she did, I poised to give my follow-up comment but when she finished I didn't have a chance as my not as other brother burst out, ''That's not what happened!'' She had made the mistake of telling the story in front of other family members who knew better. He compared memories with my eldest brother about the day: My not as older brother had been the one alone with my mother as the rest of the family was away with our father in the Volkswagen bus. This news made more sense to me as I knew my sister had been the one taking care of me until she went to College. My not as older brother had called the ambulance at my mother's request and the rest of the family had arrived home just as the ambulance was loading mother to take her to the hospital.

Mother was mute and paled as she realized the mistake she had made by telling the story in front of my brothers. Not only had it embarrassed her, perhaps bringing her own memory into question, but I now knew for certain that she had been telling this story to all of those friends of mine over the years just to poison me in their eyes, and not because it was true. I had the proof that it had been a false story and she wouldn't be able to tell it again in front of me now knowing I had the truth. Mother just remained silent for the next hour or so until we loaded up for the nighttime drive around Washington D.C..

I visited with Luke midday early in the week, perhaps before the family made to trip to the local shopping mall. He must have gotten some time off from work to meet me as his girl friend was at work herself at the time. We discussed life in general, and compelled by years of habit during our high school time, I brought with me a box of computer disks to show him my programs of the past few years in Colorado. It turned out his plans to become an engineer hadn't panned out. In fact all of my high school friends who had gotten into the 'advanced placement program' I was barred from had all intended to become engineers and all of them had washed out. With some family working in the D.C. area, Luke had fallen into a small job helping out with document preservation at the Library Of Congress and was thinking of taking it up as his profession.

We met again for dinner the Saturday before I left and he and his girlfriend took me out to eat. I noted my attempts to write for television. They also knew someone who had been trying to sell scripts to 'The Other Show' and it hadn't worked out either. I told them of my years of health problems and surprise cure just a year earlier, I didn't explain why it had taken so long for it to have been addressed. I told them I was now getting back on my feet and hoped to return to College to complete my degree. When I asked about Van, they really didn't know what he was up to anymore. They thought that he might have been looking into becoming a veterinarian after his own college plans hadn't worked out, but they weren't sure as Van had seemed to withdraw more and more over the years. At the end of the meal they offered to pay and, given my tight finances, I didn't protest too strongly and thanked them.

We parted promising to keep in touch. He soon moved to Texas for a scholarship in document preservation and a few years later I lost touch with him. When I got home, I would call Van for that chance to better 'catch up', but after leaving a message on his answering machine, he never called back. Given Luke's note about Van withdrawing from his old friendships, I didn't call again and pry, remembering my own times wanting to withdraw from friendships rather than pass on bad news about my life.

On the flight home, this time I was seated right next to mother and she reverted to her old compulsion to derisively dismiss and belittle my two brothers' wives and my new nieces as she did with everyone she met in her life. Having become sick of her doing this over the many years since she took me from the family home to the New England apartment, I asked her if that was all she had for her memories of the trip: Nothing but negative bile and no happy times? This befuddled her and while I had thought I might have to ask if there was a free seat elsewhere in the plane I could take to avoid her for the next few hours, to my thankful surprise mother kept her silence for the rest of the flight.

When we arrived back in Colorado, then caught our connecting flight, Daina picked us up at the airport and took mother home and then me. She offered to take me out to dinner so I could bring her up to speed on the trip. I agreed.

In less than two weeks, I would be reported dead.

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Unwelcomed

56

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Was this me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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