BALLS Read online

  The first part of the plan was no problem: I got into Colgate University, which had a great academic reputation and happened to be ranked the number one party school in the US. I graduated in 1991 with a major in psychology and a minor in keg stands.

  The killing myself part, however, was proving to be much more elusive. Certainly not because I was happy. I was back living with my parents under their roof and “their rules” while working as a freelance production assistant (aka “PA”) on TV commercial shoots, which meant 6:00 a.m. call times, fourteen-hour days, and squat for pay. You’d think all this would’ve hastened my motivation. But instead I just kept delaying what I deemed to be the inevitable. Every night after the usual round of tears, I lay in my childhood bed wondering how I would do it.

  Shoot myself? No way. Getting my hands on a gun would be too complicated, and even if I had one, I didn’t think I could bring myself to pull the trigger.

  Leave the car running in the garage? No guarantees. I could wind up brain-dead, not dead-dead.

  Slitting my wrists was an option. I could contain the blood by being in the bathtub like in all the movies. But I hated my body. The last thing I wanted was to be discovered naked. I guess I could keep my clothes on . . . No. That would be weird.

  Overdose? Yes, that was probably the best way, but on what? There was nothing in the house stronger than NyQuil, and like most of the condiments in my parents’ refrigerator, that too had expired.

  Months went by and I found myself still alive. I’d be behind the wheel staring at that solid yellow line and imagine suddenly swerving into oncoming traffic, then rule it out for fear of hurting someone else. Since I was apparently too scared to actively take my own life, I drove around without a seatbelt on, hoping for someone to hit me. And I was hit. Twice. But both times the car was parked and I wasn’t in it.

  Too miserable to live and too afraid to die, I somehow mustered up the courage to call my closest friend, Jess, who coincidentally was also the girl I hoped to marry one day. I’d met her my junior year at Colgate. She was a freshman and joined the rugby team I was on that spring. Five-foot six, blonde, and blue-eyed, she had classic girl-next-door looks and was the nicest person I’d ever met. We all used to make fun of her for saying “sorry” all the time despite never being at fault for anything. She had the same sense of humor I did and a smile that made me melt. I began looking forward to practice simply because I knew she would be there.

  We became fast friends and started hanging out outside of rugby. I would deliver pizza to her at study group, and she would drag me out of the library and into The Jug, the easiest bar to get into if you were underage. She lived in the dorms and I lived in a great house off campus with three roommates, so she ended up hanging at my place a lot. Jess didn’t have a boyfriend but I knew it was only a matter of time. I was used to harboring crushes on girls only to suffer in silence when the inevitable boyfriend entered the picture, but it didn’t stop me from fantasizing. Fantasy was all I had. All I knew. But with my reality now way too much to bear, I had to confide in someone. It was around 11:30 at night when I dialed her number.

  Laying there in the dark, I told Jess everything. Through tears I described how ever since I was little I’d felt like a boy inside, and still did. That I was attracted to girls—specifically her—but that I knew I wasn’t gay. That it was more than that. That I was in the wrong body. That I felt like I was living a lie and I just couldn’t do it anymore.

  She mostly just listened. While not having to face her made it easier, without seeing her face I couldn’t tell what she was really thinking. I felt incredibly guilty about dumping all this on her at once. But when I was done talking she was extremely supportive and said she would be there for me. I wasn’t sure if she meant as a friend or a love interest, but I didn’t press for specifics. I was just happy she didn’t call me a freak and hang up. What Jess was clear on was her worry for me. She encouraged me to speak with a professional—a doctor or therapist who could help me make sense of these feelings and figure out what to do next.

  When I hung up the phone, I felt a mix of emotions: a sense of relief, the feeling that I wasn’t alone, and at last, hope.

  ••

  Jess was right. I needed to find a medical professional to talk to. But I had no idea how or where to begin finding the right person. This was 1992. I couldn’t just Google “Doctors specializing in gender issues + MA” and get a list of names, phone numbers, and locations. There was no Google. Or Internet. I didn’t even have a computer. So out of desperation I made an appointment with the only doctor I knew: my pediatrician.

  It wasn’t until I was sitting in “the waiting room time forgot,” surrounded by children aged nine months to thirteen years, that I realized at twenty-three how badly I would stick out. Too old to be a patient and too young to be a parent, I clearly did not belong in that room. I felt all eyes were on me and was fairly certain the little boy whispering to his mother was telling her I was really a man.

  After what felt like a lifetime, a nurse called my name, guided me to an examination room, and before I even had a chance to sit down, curtly asked me the reason for my visit. Knowing I’d likely have to get through this step before actually being able to speak with my doctor, I’d spent the drive over figuring out how I would answer this question. What I didn’t expect was that the door would be wide open to the reception area, offering me a view of four-year-old “Olivia” hopping spastically around in circles for what appeared to be my benefit.

  “I need a referral to see a specialist.” Vague, but true.

  The nurse looked at me impatiently. “For what?”

  I stared at her. “Depression.” Again, not a lie but not enough to satisfy her.

  “Well, what are you depressed about?” She clicked her pen.

  “I’d rather wait to speak with the doctor about that. It’s kind of a long story.”

  She looked at me for a beat, unclicked her pen, and mercifully opted not to press me any further. “She’ll be right in.”

  A minute later my pediatrician appeared and abruptly closed the door behind her. She looked pretty much the same as I remembered: relatively tall for a woman and somewhat stocky with short dark hair, olive complexion, and a thick accent I could never really place. Hungarian maybe? She had been our family doctor for the last ten years so she also knew both my sisters and my mom. She always seemed like she was in a rush, which was clearly the case today. This was not going to be a nurturing visit.

  “So Kristin, you are depressed . . . what’s going on?”

  “I, um . . . I . . .” And I broke down.

  With tears streaming down my face, I managed to tell her I had always felt like a man inside—ever since I was little. That I have only ever been attracted to women, and that I couldn’t live this lie or this life anymore. She brushed off my concerns, telling me I was not a man, just a “masculine woman.” I told her I had seen a British model named Tula on The Maury Povich Show, who was a male-to-female transsexual due to a chromosomal defect and asked her to please run a test on my chromosomes; I was certain that I was a man and the test would prove it. She again told me I was not a man and that even if I was, the surgery for female to males was not medically possible yet so there was nothing I could do about it. I pushed again for the chromosome test and she relented, reasserting I was just a masculine woman and “probably a lesbian.” She gave me the name of a psychologist in the building, suggested I start meeting with her regularly, and then told me to call back in two weeks for the test results.

  I walked my paperwork down the hall to set up an appointment with my new psychologist. While waiting for the receptionist, I glanced at the referral form and noticed my pediatrician had written a diagnosis for me: hirsutism. I had no idea what the word meant, so when I got home I looked it up:

  hirsutism: (noun) Excessive growth of hair of normal or abnormal distribution

  Are you fucking kidding me? I may be hairy, but I’m not stupid. This gender issu
e of mine was not going to be cured with electrolysis.

  For the next two weeks, I prayed the chromosome test would yield an explanation for why I felt the way I did. I needed there to be a biological reason to make it okay. So it wasn’t my fault. So people wouldn’t think I was insane. So my parents wouldn’t blame themselves. When I called my pediatrician’s office two weeks later, they put me right through to my doctor who was pleased to inform me that I was “perfectly normal—no genetic abnormalities whatsoever.”

  I wanted to throw up.

  I asked her to print out a copy of my results and leave it for me at the desk. Part of me didn’t trust her based on the “hairy” diagnosis, and the other part of me hoped there was some mistake. Maybe my new psychologist would have an answer. Surely she would listen to me and understand where I was coming from.

  But once again, I found myself trying to be talked out of my feelings and discouraged from even considering gender reassignment.1 Not only that, it seemed she knew even less about the subject than I did. At my first session, I mentioned I’d done some research at the library and found the phone numbers for two gender clinics in the US and one in Canada. I told her I was going to ask all three places to send me information, but was living at home and for obvious reasons didn’t want giant envelopes to arrive for me marked “Center for Gender Reassignment.” She suggested I have them sent care of her office and she would call me when they arrived. Finally, a helpful suggestion!

  I came back a few weeks later to pick up the information packets and found the envelopes had all been opened.

  Huh, interesting. Last I heard opening someone else’s mail was a federal offense.

  “Who opened these?” I asked.

  “I did,” she said. “I thought I should read the material so we could discuss it.”

  I felt violated and left her office fuming. On the way home I tried to rationalize her taking liberties with my mail. I guess it would make our sessions more constructive if she had the same information I did. Still, she should’ve asked my permission. I had almost resolved to forgive her when I sat down to read everything and discovered she had also taken a yellow highlighter to every detail about surgery that could be deemed negative or risky. It became clear to me that she had her own agenda and was not someone I could trust. I needed to find a new therapist—someone who could be objective and had experience treating patients with gender identity issues—but I was back to having no idea where or how to find such a person. I tried researching. I even asked my mail-tampering psychologist if there was anyone she could refer me to, that’s how desperate I was. But there was no one to be found.

  So in spite of her blatant act of betrayal, our sessions continued, which actually ended up being a good thing. To her credit, she got me to open up to my family—a more important first step than resolving my gender issue itself. More than ever I needed their support, and as much as I knew they loved me, I still wasn’t sure I was going to get it.

  1 I’ll be using the terms “gender reassignment” and “gender reassignment surgery” (GRS) throughout the book because that’s what it was called at the time. But this terminology has since been deemed inaccurate; it is not one’s gender being reassigned with surgery but rather one’s anatomical sex. So “sex reassignment” and “sex reassignment surgery” (SRS) are the more commonly used terms. Today, however, the preferred and more politically correct terminology is “gender affirmation surgery” or “gender confirmation surgery.”

  ALL IN THE FAMILY

  June 7, 1992

  Another typical Sunday dinner at my parents’ house. Only this one would end up changing our family forever. With Jill back from college for the summer, Wendy in between apartments, and me not making enough money to rent a PO box let alone my own place, my parents had the treat of all three of us living back at home again. It was just like old times. The only thing different was my nickname. Instead of “Kre,” I was now being called “Shtiny,” or “Shtine” for short (pronounced like “shiny” or “shine,” only with a “t”). Don’t ask, just go with it.

  The five of us were sitting around the kitchen table in our usual seats, eating chicken and pilaf, our traditional Sunday fare. Well, everyone else was eating. I was pushing the food around my plate, sick to my stomach as I tried to get up the nerve to tell them all my big secret. I thought it would be best for them to hear it at the same time so no one would be forced to keep it from the others, and selfishly I didn’t want to have the conversation more than once. Rip the Band-Aid off, so to speak. I chose dinner, knowing we would all be together anyway. The last thing I wanted to do was call a family meeting and have everyone staring at me expectantly.

  From the moment I sat down at the table, I tried to think of a way in. My psychologist advised that I break it to them in stages, that it would be easier for them to digest my revelation that way rather than to come right out and tell them my end goal—gender reassignment. A logical approach, yes, but how the hell do I bring it up? “Wendy, will you please pass the rolls and from now on start referring to me as your brother?” If I had been gay, I could’ve just said “I’m gay” and all of them would’ve known what that meant. But there was no vocabulary yet for what I was going through. Today, kids could say they were transgender and, most likely, thanks to the media and celebrities like Chaz Bono, Laverne Cox, and Caitlyn Jenner, their parents would know what they were talking about. Or at least have a vague idea. But back when I was going through this, “transgender” wasn’t really a word yet. The only word out there was “transsexual,” and it had only negative connotations thanks to movies that portrayed transsexual characters as deviants and serial killers.

  Take The Silence of the Lambs, Oscar winner for best picture. Its villain, “Buffalo Bill,” was a serial killer who, as Dr. Hannibal Lecter put it, “fancied himself a transsexual.” Having been rejected from a well-reputed gender clinic, he went on a killing spree, removing the skin from his female victims to sew himself his own female body. Lovely. I saw that movie senior year in college. I was supposed to go to a party afterward but went directly home instead.

  Did the lambs stop screaming? No they did not.

  Then came The Crying Game. When I saw it, I had no idea what it was about. Nobody would talk about the storyline for fear of giving away the “big surprise.” They’d say, “Just go see it. You won’t believe the surprise.” Even the movie trailers simply said, “Don’t ruin the surprise.” Well, **spoiler alert,** “she” has a penis and it does not go over well with her male love interest, who, upon discovering said surprise, repeatedly pukes.

  Great.

  Not even comedies were safe. I went to see Ace Ventura: Pet Detective a few months later. I was laughing from the beginning of the movie right up until **spoiler alert** Ace figured out that detective Lois Einhorn, whom he had just made out with, was actually a man. To add to the hilarity, he then used a plunger on his mouth to induce vomiting while the theme song from The Crying Game played in the background. I felt the urge to vomit but for a different reason.

  Meanwhile, television talk shows that sensationalized “real life” transsexuals weren’t helping matters either. Their endgame wasn’t to educate and inform the audience. It was to exploit their guests, most of whom were male to female and unable to “pass” as women in society’s eyes, causing many viewers to label them as “men in drag” or worse, “freaks.”

  All of this is what everyone I knew would have as a frame of reference. It’s what made me so scared to tell my family what was going on inside my head. I was afraid they’d look at me like I was a freak. Using the word transsexual to describe myself would not only frighten them but also lead straight to the surgery topic, which is what I was trying to avoid.

  To make matters worse, I was struggling with the concept of gender identity myself. I had no idea where or how to begin to explain something so intrinsic to my being—something my whole family took for granted because their gender identities matched the bodies they were born with. M
y stomach was in knots as I listened to the chatter going on around me. Mom, Dad, and my sisters didn’t seem to have a care in the world, and I was about to change all that. I caught my pained expression in the glass tabletop and almost began to cry.

  At one point there was a lull and I opened my mouth to speak, still not sure what words were going to come out. I was cut off by a “Holy Moley” sighting, which prompted my dad to fling open the sliding glass door to the deck and shout obscenities at the giant mole that made its home in our backyard. He appeared only on Sundays, hence the name Holy Moley or “Holy” for short, and only during dinner when we were seated by the windows. Dad was convinced Holy was taunting us. Normally I found this entertaining. Not tonight.

  I was running out of time. Instead of sitting back down, Dad took his plate to the sink and left the kitchen just as Jill was finishing a story she thought was hilarious. Paralyzed by my own anxiety, I didn’t register a word she was saying, so when the punch line came and I was the only one at the table not laughing, she turned to me and jokingly said, “Oh, Shtiny, what’s your problem?”