BALLS Read online

  But the one thing about having close female friends: The more time they spend with you, the easier it is for them to tell when something’s wrong. So, when I came in one Monday after spending most of the weekend in tears, it didn’t take long for Beth and Mandy to start probing. I wanted to tell them, but what was I going to say? Well, guys, on Saturday the girl I’ve been in love with for the last three years informed me that she’s in a relationship with someone, and the reason she hasn’t been returning my calls for the past few months is because she knew I had feelings for her and didn’t know how to break it to me. I was hoping she wouldn’t date anyone until I had my gender reassignment surgery and then we could be together and get married.

  I was not ready to go there. “I don’t want to talk about it” was all I could muster up.

  I had managed to get through the first part of the weekend unscathed. My roommate, Jim, could tell I was upset; but guy friends don’t pry when it comes to this sort of thing. I knew he’d wait for me to bring it up if I wanted to talk about it. When Sunday morning rolled around, though, and I still hadn’t said anything, he finally caved and asked me if I was okay. I said yes, knowing he’d follow guy code and drop the subject—whether he believed me or not.

  On Sunday afternoon I drove out to Wayland for family dinner. The last thing I wanted to do was have another breakdown at the table, so I put on my best face and decided to leave early so I could be alone with my misery. I was fine until I went to say goodbye to Dad, who was in the garage digging up a bucket and some sponges to wash my sister’s car.

  “You’re leaving already?”

  “Yeah, I got stuff to do.”

  “Is everything alright? You seem sad today.”

  You know those times when you’re upset but you think you have your emotions under control, and then you call home and your mom or dad answers the phone and just hearing their voice makes you burst into tears? It was like that.

  “Jess is seeing someone,” I blurted out. He pulled me into a hug.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I know how you feel about her. But what did you think was gonna happen?”

  I pulled away and looked at him, confused.

  “Did you really think she would wait for you?”

  Ouch.

  It wasn’t that I thought she would, more that I’d hoped she would. I’d naively made Jess part of my future, even though deep down inside I knew it was just a fantasy. In my dreams I was a man and I was married to her (and taller than her). Who was I kidding? She had her whole life ahead of her. She could have any guy she wanted. Why would she want to saddle herself with someone who required years of surgery to physically turn himself into one?

  But I needed something to believe in, to keep me going, and that something was Jess—or more accurately, the dream of Jess. And now she was gone and I had nothing to hope for. The pain was constant. The Prozac helped me focus on my work, but in between meetings, the dull ache would return.

  Beth asked me almost daily if I wanted to talk about anything. I told her there was something—something I wasn’t ready to talk about yet—but when I was, she and Mandy would be the first ones I’d turn to. That time was coming soon; I knew it.

  So did my therapist. Bet had finally confirmed my self-diagnosis: I was indeed transgender. Her official diagnosis was critical to me for a few reasons. First and most obvious, it validated what I’d known all along and gave me a major sense of relief; I was not crazy (as the previous two doctors would have had me believe). Second, it made my situation very real. This wasn’t going away. I was going to change, and as a result my whole world was going to change. Lastly, it meant I had completed step one of the gender reassignment process (back then an official diagnosis was required if you wanted to have surgery). I could now begin socially transitioning whenever I was ready. But just because I was ready didn’t mean my parents were.

  A loving and supportive family is critical to a successful transition. Unfortunately it’s something most trans kids do not have and a big reason why more than fifty percent of them will attempt suicide before their twentieth birthday.2

  I was lucky. When I told my parents I wanted to change my gender they didn’t shun me or kick me out of the house. But they did initially ask me to reconsider. My dad spoke for both of them, telling me they were worried I’d be worse off, that I wouldn’t be able to pass, that I’d lose my friends, that strangers would laugh at me on sight—that it would be harder for me to adjust and live a “normal” life than it already was.

  And how could I blame them? What little information there was on this topic was mostly negative and, thanks to the mail tamperer, highlighted in yellow. There were no success stories they could look to for reassurance, and surgery to go from female to male was nowhere near where it is today. They were scared. And so was I. Not just because I was about to risk everything for a chance at finally being happy, but because my father, the man I’d always gone to for advice, was advising against it.

  And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t listening to him.

  2 Statistic found at http://www.yspp.org/about_suicide/statistics.htm.

  THE “HIT LIST”

  Fall 1994

  I may be transgender, but I’m also a Taurus—as stubborn as the day is long. So when Bet started questioning my plan to move out of state to undergo my transition, the bull reared its ugly head.

  “What do you mean? Of course I have to move away.”

  “How come?” Bet asked. “Why can’t you do it here, where you have a support network?”

  I laughed sarcastically. “Are you living in Fantasyland?”

  “Have you stopped to consider it?”

  “No. I haven’t considered it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because first of all, I’m not going to humiliate my family.”

  “Why do you think your family will be humiliated?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Here we go.”

  “They’ve been pretty supportive so far,” she reminded me.

  “That’s because nobody outside the family knows yet. Wait till I become the gossip of the town and people start calling me a freak.”

  She leaned toward me. “Why do you care so much about what other people think?” “Um, because we live in a SOCIETY.”

  “Maybe you should stop caring so much about society so you can start focusing more on what you need to do to be happy.”

  “Easy for you to say.” I turned away from Bet and gazed out the tiny window to the left of her head, wishing I could fit through it.

  “Well, look where it’s gotten you so far,” she reasoned. “I’m just suggesting you step back and think about what’s best for you—what will give you the best chances of success in transitioning so that you come out of this healthy and adjusted. You’re going to have to undergo a “real-life test” where you live as a man for six months before you’re eligible for any medical procedures, and after that you’ll have to go through not one but likely a series of surgeries that could take years. It might be much harder and much more stressful for you to move to another state where you have no family or friends for support and try to do all that in secret.”

  She had me there. My family hadn’t shunned me. And while they wanted me to reconsider, they had promised to stand by me, whatever I decided to do. My friends, well, I guess if they don’t support me they were never really my friends to begin with. It would be easier not having to move. Packing would suck, especially all the glassware and kitchen stuff . . . Wait, was I actually rethinking this? Crap.

  “Well, I guess if I stayed in Boston I could leave Arnold and find another job.”

  “Why would you need to leave Arnold?” Bet said.

  “Are you kidding me?!” Now she was pushing it.

  “You love your job. You love the people you work with. Why do you have to give that up?”

  Ah, because I’m scared shitless and I literally and figuratively don’t have the balls. “Because I couldn’t do that to my dad.”


  “Having met your father, I believe he would want you to do whatever was easiest for you. If that meant staying at Arnold, I bet he’d support that.”

  “So you think staying at Arnold and becoming a man in front of the entire agency would be easier than just getting a job somewhere else as a man where no one knew me before?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just asking you to think about it. Sometimes it’s easier to do something openly. Over time it’s a lot less stressful when you’re not worried about people finding out your big secret.”

  Me? Not worried? Did she forget that I’m a worrier by nature? That I stress over EVERYTHING. In high school I was voted “Most Likely to Get an Ulcer,” for god’s sake. So when it came to changing my gender in front of everyone I knew, I was consumed with worry—worry about what people were going to think or say or do. It was paralyzing.

  But Bet helped me realize something that would become the single most important guiding principle both during and after my transition: I had the ability to control the way people responded to me—that the way I acted could actually shape the way others reacted. If I came off ashamed or secretive, people would gossip and rumors would spread. But if I handled myself openly with dignity and grace, people would treat me in kind. If I was approachable and lighthearted, they would feel comfortable around me. If I was patient, encouraged questions, and took the time to help them understand, they would have an open mind and come to accept me for who I was.

  Something in my head clicked. It was like Bet had unlocked a secret inner power I didn’t know I had—one that gave me the balls to take control of my transition and my life and do what I needed to do to be happy.

  The first step: a heart-to-heart with my dad.

  ••

  “Dad, how would you feel if I stayed at Arnold and went through my transition? I want you to be honest. I can totally look for another job. It’s not a big deal.”

  The poor man was at the kitchen table peacefully enjoying his nightly cookies and milk when I lobbed this grenade at him. I held my breath.

  He stared at me earnestly and put down his half-eaten Oreo. “Kris, I want you to do whatever’s best for you. Don’t worry about me. You have enough to worry about. If you want to stay at Arnold, I’ll support you.”

  All at once I felt so much love for my dad and so much fear for myself. A little part of me hoped he would say, “Absolutely not—find another job!” and spare me from having to muster up the tremendous amount of courage it was going to take to get through this next phase.

  Before I could even enter that phase, I had some homework to do: I needed to come up with my “hit list”—a list of people I felt I needed to drop the “boy bomb” on in person. Bet had asked me to bring this to our next session. It was time to let people outside my immediate family in on my secret, and she was going to strategize with me and help come up with a game plan. When I finished my assignment, I had eighty-seven names, the first four of which were Mom, Dad, Wendy, and Jill. Yes, I had already told them, but I wrote their names down anyway just so I could cross them off and feel like I’d made some progress.

  “Wow, you know all these people?” Bet said, examining the piece of paper.

  “Yeah, I have a lot of friends.”

  “Okay, who do you think you’d like to start with?”

  I’d actually been doing a lot of thinking about this and had two people in mind.

  Since my mom seemed to be struggling with the idea of losing a daughter, it was important to me that she have someone she could confide in other than my dad and my therapist (she’d met with Bet a few times). So the first person I was going to tell was her sister, Barbara. I was very close with Aunty Barbie growing up. She was a kindergarten teacher and had a warm and nurturing way about her. I knew she’d be a good listener and felt the odds were also in my favor that she’d understand or at least try to, and then be there for my mom. I called her at home in Connecticut and less than thirty-six hours after hanging up with me, she was pulling into my parents’ driveway. My parents were in Florida, but Jill and Wendy were with me for moral support, and soon the four of us were sitting on the navy blue leather sectional in tears. Mine began even before I opened my mouth.

  “I’ve been diagnosed with gender dysphoria,” I told Aunty.

  “I know,” she said. “Your mom told me in confidence this summer. She didn’t want me to tell you but I couldn’t sit here and pretend like I didn’t know.”

  I looked at my sisters and we all shook our heads. Mom was not known for her secret-keeping skills, but I couldn’t be mad at her for this one. She’d needed someone to talk to, which was why I was telling Aunty in the first place. It just would have been nice to know she’d already taken the initiative.

  “I’m sorry to make you drive all the way here,” I said.

  “Honey, it’s two hours, I wanted to talk to you in person and I’m glad you were ready to open up to me.”

  She held my hand and we both cried as I told her how painful my life has been living as a girl.

  “I just can’t do it anymore, Aunty. Surgery is my only hope if I ever want to be happy. I was going to move away where nobody knew me and then go through it, but after talking with my therapist, I decided to stay here where I would at least have support from family and hopefully my friends.”

  I then laid out my plan to transition while still working at Arnold.

  She told me how brave I was, but I could see fear in her eyes. I knew she was scared for me.

  “You’ll find out who your real friends are,” she said. “To a true friend it won’t make a difference whether you’re male or female on the outside. You’ll still be you on the inside and that’s all that matters. If they can’t deal with it then they weren’t really your friends to begin with.”

  I nodded in agreement, knowing what she said was the truth, but it really didn’t make me feel any better. There was nothing anyone could say to reassure me completely. In my world, this had never been done before. There was no experience or “best practices” I could draw from. No crystal ball. We both reached at the same time for the tissue box Jill had been hoarding.

  As Aunty stood up to go, I gave her a copy of the one article I’d found that I thought did a great job explaining gender dysphoria in layman’s terms. She asked me if I wanted her to share all this with my cousins. I told her Adam and Dana were on my hit list, but that it would make it easier for me to talk to them about it knowing it wouldn’t be coming out of the blue. We hugged and she was gone. After closing the door behind her, I went back into the family room and flopped down on the couch where Wendy and Jill were still sitting. They looked almost as emotionally drained as I felt.

  “I think that went well,” Wendy said encouragingly.

  “Who’s next, Shtine?” Jill asked.

  ••

  The next person on the list was also named Barbara. “Babs” was Wendy’s closest friend and confidante. A coworker at Arnold, she was someone I considered a good friend too. I wanted Wendy to have an outsider she could talk to and Babs was perfect. Not only was she trustworthy, she knew our whole family and could act as a gauge for how my news would go over at the agency.

  Still, in my mind it was a lot easier for friends to walk away than relatives. I had no idea how Babs would react. All she knew was that I had something important to tell her and it was serious. She tried to get some intel out of my sister but Wendy wouldn’t bite.

  We met for dinner at the Sail Loft, an old-school shanty overlooking Boston Harbor, one of our favorite spots. Babs swore their fish-and-chips were the best in all of New England, and I loved the fact that at the bar, instead of bowls of peanuts, there were jars of Oreos. (Like father, like son.)

  It was there at a table by the bar that I choked. Well, not literally. I don’t even think I took a bite of my chicken fingers. I had rehearsed what I was going to say to imaginary Barbara over and over in my head; but with the real Barbara staring back at me with a concern
ed and expectant look on her face, I got totally flustered. I couldn’t remember where to start. I was all over the map and crying so much that the waitress wouldn’t come near our table. That extra tartar sauce and honey mustard we asked for? Yeah, that wasn’t happening.

  Babs was clearly caught off guard by my revelation and the emotional unraveling happening before her eyes and those of everyone around us. I could tell she wanted to hug me but felt forced to hold her composure for the sake of appearances. She asked a question every now and then, in an attempt to fully process what I was saying, and did a lot of nodding to show her support. When we finally got up to leave with our uneaten dinners boxed to go, I apologized for making her my “guinea pig,” letting her know she was the first one outside my family I’d told and that I chose her so she could be there for Wendy.

  “I’ll be there for you too, Shtine,” she said, putting her arm around me.

  “Thanks Babs. Sorry for the scene.”

  “I’m sure you’ll get better at it with practice,” she said. “Next time, though, you might want to tell people in the privacy of your own home.”

  We both laughed.

  Babs was right: I did get better with practice, especially when it came to reining in my emotions. Some of my friends made it very easy for me, like Beth and Mandy, my next victims.

  I’d actually come close to telling them a few times since that Monday morning after I found out about Jess’s boyfriend. One night after a few drinks Mandy almost got it out of me. I stopped myself from telling her, but must’ve given her a pretty big clue, because the next day there was an envelope from her on my desk. Inside was a pencil sketch of some type of flower. I wasn’t sure what to make of it until I noticed Mandy’s handwriting on the back of her drawing. She wrote that she thought she’d figured out what I was going through and if she was right, I had a tough road ahead of me and was the bravest person she knew. That last line gave me the feeling she might have guessed correctly, but I couldn’t be sure.