BALLS Read online

  And that became my opening . . . for another one of my patented breakdowns.

  Nobody knew what was going on. Jill held my hand and over the sound of my own sobbing I heard Mom say to Wendy, “Get Dad.” When Wendy returned with my father, I was still crying hysterically, using my free hand to cover my face because I couldn’t bear to look anyone in the eye. When I finally composed myself, I admitted to my family that I’d been depressed for years, had repeatedly thought about killing myself, and had been secretly going to therapy for the last three months. My hope was that they’d be so relieved I didn’t commit suicide that whatever I told them next wouldn’t seem so bad. I gave it a moment or two to sink in, wiped my nose with my shirtsleeve, and came clean.

  Through tears, I told them that as far back as I could remember I had always felt I was a boy—even when I was five years old. I explained that that was why growing up I played with superheroes, cars, and action figures. Why I wore my hair short. Why I refused to wear skirts or dresses and always wore layers of clothing over my bathing suit. I told them I have only ever been attracted to girls. That in my dreams I was always male. That every time I looked in the mirror, what I saw didn’t match up with who I felt I was inside. Finally, I admitted my feelings for Jess and told them she was the only one who knew any of this and had convinced me to get help. I didn’t mention anything about surgery. I thought that was enough to dump on them in one sitting.

  They listened intently. All of them were crying—even my dad, which was something I had witnessed only two other times in my life, both of them funerals. Jill never let go of my hand except to give me a napkin to wipe my nose, which had been running uncontrollably. It was Wendy who first broke the silence, trying to make sense of everything she’d just heard.

  “So . . . you’re gay?” Everyone kind of nodded and looked at me reassuringly as if to say, it’s okay, you can say it.

  I had a feeling this would happen; if I said I was attracted to girls, that would be the piece they would latch onto because being gay was something they understood. And perhaps something they suspected I was all along.

  “No, I’m not gay,” I said. “I mean, I’m attracted to girls, but I’m not gay. I’m in the wrong body.”

  Now everyone really looked confused, especially my mom, who in a well-meaning attempt to problem-solve, volunteered to sign us both up for the gym. “Maybe if you lost a few pounds and toned up, you’d feel better about your body. I’ll go with you. We’ll do it together.”

  My sisters looked at her like she was crazy. I appreciated Mom’s sweet gesture and willingness to help but was getting more and more worried I wouldn’t be able to explain this any more clearly without bringing up surgery. I was just about to “go there” when Dad stepped in and tried to make me feel better by explaining to me that gender is defined on a continuum.

  “Kris, there is no black or white when it comes to male or female,” he said. “There are effeminate males and masculine females, and you fall somewhere on the latter end of the spectrum.”

  I listened, wondering if he’d secretly had a talk with my pediatrician, but I didn’t argue. I’d been processing this information my whole life. They were all hearing it now for the first time. I wiped my eyes and took in their faces. They all seemed to be wearing expressions of sadness and concern laced with confusion and what I took to be a hint of fear. I felt guilty for dropping this on them. Gay was one thing—this was way more than they bargained for.

  Nonetheless, when all was said and done, there were lots of hugs and promises that they would be there for me and that we would get through this together as a family. Jill said, “I’d rather have you as a brother than not at all,” which made me feel she’d read between the lines and truly understood that those were basically the only possible outcomes. Whether everyone else made that leap with her, I wasn’t certain, but it was a great first step and their reactions were more than I’d hoped for. I felt a huge sense of relief to finally share this burden with them. I actually felt lighter.

  The next day everything went back to normal.

  And by that I mean it was as though the conversation never happened.

  Days went by as I waited for someone in my family to just ask me how I was doing or feeling or if I wanted to talk—some form of acknowledgment that I didn’t imagine the whole scene at the dinner table. But no one brought up the subject. After two weeks, when my disappointment was beginning to turn into anger, my dad asked me to go for a walk and gingerly broached the subject.

  “So . . . how are you doing?”

  “The same . . . thanks for asking.”

  “I’ve been wanting to ask, we all have, but we were afraid it would make you upset so we were waiting for you to bring it up again.”

  “Well, I was waiting for you guys to bring it up.”

  We both kind of laughed. This was starting to feel like an ABC Afterschool Special.

  “So . . . did you meet with your doctor this week?” he asked. I was impressed. Great way in, Dad.

  “Yeah, she was very proud of me for telling you guys and said keeping the dialogue open is really important. But she’s still not validating any of my feelings about being a man. She treats me like I’m crazy even though there’s a medical diagnosis for what I’m feeling.”

  “There is?”

  “Yeah, gender dysphoria. I read about it in the information packets the gender clinics sent me.”

  I knew the definition by heart now.

  gender dysphoria: (noun) A persistent unease with having the physical characteristics of one’s gender, accompanied by strong identification with the opposite gender and a desire to live as or to become a member of the opposite gender.

  The fact that there was an actual medical term that described what I had been feeling my entire life had completely blown my mind. It made me feel validated—relieved that I wasn’t insane and that there were others who felt the same way I did. And now I hoped it would legitimize my “condition” in the eyes of my father. My dad is one of the smartest men I know—not just in the field of advertising but in all practical matters. He earned a degree in engineering at Villanova and worked for NASA before getting his MBA from Harvard. Knowing he thought like an engineer, I figured he would be drawn to a term that sounded scientific. I was right.

  After I explained what gender dysphoria meant, he asked if he and Mom could read the literature the clinics had sent me. With my mom’s background in nursing, I knew she’d be able to understand and translate all the medical stuff. The question was, were either of them ready to learn about and/or entertain the idea of surgery as a solution to my problem? I wasn’t sure, but decided to roll the dice. When we got home I gathered the manila envelopes together with an elastic band and handed everything over, hoping it would prompt an open, productive dialogue. And then I waited. But not for long. The next day I found myself out for a walk with Dad again.

  “Your mother and I read the material. Wow, all that surgery . . . that’s a lot of pain and suffering to go through for results that aren’t even that good. Seems like you agree that surgery isn’t the way to go.”

  I looked at him cockeyed.

  “Well, you highlighted all the negative parts, so we figured—”

  “My therapist highlighted all that,” I corrected. “She opened my mail.”

  “WHAT?” Apparently my dad was just as appalled as I had been when I discovered the crime.

  “Yeah, as I told you yesterday, she clearly has her own opinion. But as far as I’m concerned, if I ever want to be happy, surgery is my only option.”

  There. I’d said it. We both stared straight ahead, avoiding eye contact, and continued walking.

  Finally, Dad said, “Do you think you could just live with it . . . go on as you are now, keeping it inside, and just let this be your handicap?”

  He said it with such hope in his voice, as though I could make it all go away with a simple “yes.” Sure, Dad—great idea! Instead it was like a slap in the face. I tho
ught back to my breakdown at the dinner table two weeks earlier—everything I had said about my depression and thoughts of suicide. I thought they had understood the severity of this issue. I thought I had made myself clear. I thought we were making progress.

  “Dad, did you not hear me when I said I wanted to kill myself? This isn’t something I can compartmentalize and put on a shelf. This is my identity. It’s who I am every day. Imagine if you looked in the mirror every morning and saw a woman looking back at you. That all your friends, family, every person on the street, treated you like a woman. That when you went out to a client meeting, church, or formal event you had to put on a dress. Could you live with that? I’ve been doing it for twenty-three years and I just can’t do it anymore.”

  And then the tears came. Thankfully, we were only one house from our driveway. I felt his arm around my shoulder.

  “We’ll figure it out, honey.”

  Ugh, I hate when he calls me that.

  “Your mother and I just want what’s best for you. We want you to be happy. We all want you to be happy.”

  I had to remind myself that this was only our third conversation on the subject. That my parents were going to need some time to think through all of this. It was unfair of me to expect them to be okay with everything right out of the gate. I’d been living with my gender issue my whole life. For them it had only been two weeks. I needed to be patient. They had a lot of catching up to do.

  I didn’t know it then, but according to my friend who works as a family therapist specializing in gender identity, this dynamic is very common in families today. By the time kids come out as transgender, they know who they are and expect everyone else to just “get it and get on board”—they’ve waited long enough for their lives to start. On the flip side, parents, often shell-shocked by the news, need time to process it and don’t understand why their child is making such a “rash” decision. It’s important for both parties to understand where the other is coming from.

  But at least my parents and I were united on one thing: the mail tamperer’s offense, which ended up being my mom’s way of broaching the subject with me.

  “Shtine, I can’t believe that bitch opened your mail,” said the woman who took the liberty of opening all my college rejection letters before I got home from school.

  “I know, Mom. I have to find someone else.” I then changed the subject from my psychologist’s transgression to the real issue at hand. “So what did you think about the stuff you read?”

  “I don’t know . . . That’s a lot of surgery to go through and it doesn’t sound like they’ve perfected a procedure for females to become males. It seems like they can do it going the other way because you’re removing rather than adding. I don’t think you’d be happy with the results. Are you sure you’re not just gay?”

  “Mom, this goes way beyond what sex I’m attracted to. Believe me, it would be a lot easier for me if that was all it was.”

  “So you’re not doing this for Jess?”

  “What? No!”

  Since Jess was not a lesbian, my mom was hypothesizing that I was going to change my sex in order to get her to want to be with me. I assured her that was not the reason—I was doing this for myself, for my own well-being. And while I did love Jess and hoped she actually would end up wanting to be with me, deep down I knew I couldn’t count on a twenty-year-old girl still in college to make that kind of commitment.

  “All those times in your room late at night when I yelled at you to get off the phone. You were talking to her about this, weren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m so sorry, Shtine. I had no idea.”

  I squeezed her hand. “I know, Mom, I know.”

  NO, I’M NOT JUST REALLY REALLY GAY

  December 9, 1992

  Six months after the “big reveal” to my family, I sat in the waiting room outside the office of Bet MacArthur, a clinical social worker recommended to me by the program director at one of the gender clinics I’d reached out to. She had a private practice in Cambridge, and, most importantly, years of experience treating patients with gender dysphoria. Thank God!

  Five minutes early for my appointment, I could hear muffled voices coming from behind the closed door, one of them more agitated than the other. Ten minutes later, I’m still waiting and the voices don’t seem to be winding down. This strikes me as odd. Aren’t therapists usually pretty strict about time? On TV and in the movies, there’s always a bell or something that goes off when time is up and the patient is abruptly interrupted in the middle of an epiphany only to be escorted out and told “same time next week.”

  A few minutes later the door finally opened and a male figure quickly stomped past me on his way down the narrow flight of rickety stairs. Standing in the now-open doorway, Bet smiled and invited me inside. She was in her late forties and exactly what I pictured a Cambridge therapist would look like: straight, shoulder-length brown hair, graying and parted in the middle, big round glasses, no makeup, wool turtleneck sweater, corduroy pants, sensible all-weather walking shoes . . . If I were a betting man I would have wagered fifty bucks that the old Subaru Outback parked in front of the building was registered in her name.

  “Sorry about the delay,” she said. “I don’t usually run late with patients, but this one needed some extra attention today.”

  “No problem,” I said, surveying the contents of the largely beige and brown room: one lumpy couch, two well-worn chairs, a side table in need of a good dusting, a generic glass pitcher half full of water, a small sleeve of tiny plastic cups, and a box of Kleenex. I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to sit so I waited for her to sit down first. She just stood there, looking at me.

  “Where should I sit?” I asked.

  “Wherever you’d like.”

  Having been a psych major, I’m thinking she’s going to analyze my selection. If I choose the seat closest to the tissue box will she think I’m sad? If I choose the seat she usually sits in will she think I’m a control freak? Hmmm. I opted for the seat on the couch directly opposite the big chair simply because that’s what I thought made the most sense. We then proceeded to have a staring contest. Why won’t she just ask me a freaking question? Again, the psych major in me assumed this was some kind of psychoanalytical trick. Whatever it was, it made me uncomfortable. But it didn’t take long before my wish to be asked a question was granted. As it turned out, asking me questions was her way of answering all my questions.

  Me: So . . . where should we start?

  Bet: Where do you want to start?

  Me: I don’t know. Wherever you think is best.

  Bet: Where do you think is best?

  Oh my god, I wanted to throttle her. I needed someone to take the lead here, not play stupid mind games with me. I decided to give her my background first, thinking that would be easy and hopefully the questions would follow. I told her about my family dynamics, where I grew up and went to college, and by the time I got to the present I was on a roll. “Today, I’m living at home with my parents and working as a freelance production assistant while trying to get up the nerve to kill myself. I am tired of pretending to be a woman. I am a man trapped inside a woman’s body and I can’t take it anymore. Oh, I’m also in love with my best friend. There, that about covers it.”

  If Bet felt any sympathy or emotion, her expression didn’t show it. She turned the conversation to gender, specifically asking what I thought the differences were between men and women. Something told me “pee-pees” and “va-jay-jays” was not the response she was looking for. She wasn’t talking about external physical characteristics; she was talking about gender identity. What makes someone a man inside? What makes someone a woman? The answers seemed so obvious but, like that fateful night at the dinner table, I struggled to articulate them. It’s something you just know; something most people take for granted.

  I wasn’t like most people.

  I continued to meet with Bet twice a week, and she continued to ask me the
same questions over and over again. Tired of talking in circles, I finally asked, “Are these trick questions you’re asking me? How do I know I’m a man? I just do.”

  “Have you considered the possibility you might be a lesbian?” she asked.

  I told her how, when I came out to my family, they initially thought and then hoped I was “just gay”—that maybe I was a butch lesbian—and that there had been a time when I wondered that too. I was thirteen and my friend from St. Louis who came to her grandparents’ Cape house every summer invited me to go to Provincetown for the day with her family. I’d never been, but had heard that P-Town was “where all the gay people went for vacation.” While we were walking around, I noticed a lot of stores with rainbow flags selling t-shirts and bumper stickers with the word “dyke” printed on them. I asked my friend what it meant. When she said “a really masculine lesbian” I immediately felt my stomach tighten. I knew I was only attracted to girls and I did dress like a boy—was even still mistaken for one quite a bit. Oh my god. That’s what I am: a dyke. That’s what people are gonna call me. I couldn’t breathe.

  Then my friend helpfully pointed out a few examples and I started to feel a little better. These were big burly women with crew cuts and what seemed to be a penchant for either the lumberjack or biker lifestyle. One of them even bore a striking resemblance to my industrial arts teacher . . . Okay, so maybe I’m not a dyke but just a “regular” lesbian? But that wasn’t sitting right either. So I asked myself one simple question: If being gay was “normal,” would I be happy? Could I be happy? The answer was no. Because it still wouldn’t change the fact that every time I looked in the mirror I hated what I saw.

  When I recounted that last part to Bet, I finally saw the hint of a smile.

  The key to understanding gender dysphoria is realizing that sexual orientation and gender identity are two totally different and completely separate things. One isn’t dependent on the other. This is where most of the initial confusion happens—for everybody. Even after sitting on Bet’s couch for hours analyzing gender identity to death, I didn’t truly get it until I attended my first female-to-male support group. There were five attendees including myself, all of us curiously under 5’5”. The other guys were “ahead of me” in that they had already been living full-time as men and, judging by two pubescent mustaches and one attempt at a goatee, at least three of them had already begun testosterone injections. One member, who I’ll call “Brian,” was telling the group he used to be married when he was a woman and that since his divorce he’s been living as a man while attending grad school.