reflaction paper at least 400 words

THE ORflCULRR VULVfl

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f rom my birth when they went undetected, to my baptism where they upstaged the priest, to my troubled adolescence when they didn't do much of anything and then did everything at once, my

genitals have been the most significant thing that ever happened to me. Some people inherit houses; others paintings or highly insured violin bows. Still others get a Japanese tansu or a famous name. I got a recessive gene on my fifth chromosome and some very rare family jewels indeed.

My parents had at first refused to believe the emergency room doctor's wild claim about my anatomy. The diagnosis, delivered over the phone to a largely uncomprehending Milton and then bowdler- ized by him for Tessie's benefit, amounted to a vague concern about the formation of my urinary tract along with a possible hormonal de- ficiency. The doctor in Petoskey hadn't performed a karyotype. His job was to treat my concussion and contusions, and when he was, done with that, he let me go.

My parents wanted a second opinion. At Milton's insistence I had been taken one last time to see Dr. Phil.

In 1974, Dr. Nishan Philobosian was eighty-eight years old. He still wore a bow tie, but his neck no longer filled out the collar of his shirt. He was reduced in all his parts, freeze-dried. Nevertheless, green golf slacks extended from the hem of his white coat and a pair of tinted aviator-style glasses gripped his hairless head.

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''Hello, Callie, how are you?" "Fine, Dr. Phil?' "Starting school again? What grade are you in now?" "I'll be in ninth this year. High school.'' "High school? Already? I must be getting old.'' His courtly manner was no different than it had ever been. The

foreign sounds he still made, the evidence of the Old World in his teeth, put me somewhat at ease. All my life dignified foreigners had petted and pampered me. I was a sucker for the soft-handed Levan- tine affections. As a little girl I had sat on Dr. Philobosian's knee , while his fingers climbed my spinal column, counting off the verte- brae. Now I was taller than he was, gangly, frealc-haired, a Tiny Tim of a girl, sitting in gown, bra, and underpants on the edge of an old- fashioned medical table with step-drawers of vulcanized rubber. He " listened to my heart and lungs, his bald head dipping on the long< neck lilce that of a brontosaurus, sampling leaves.

"How's your father, Callie?" "Fine.'' "How's the hot dog business?" "Good?' ''How many hot dog places your dad has now?" "Like fifty or something.'' ''There's one not too far from where Nurse Rosalee and I go in

the winter. Pompano Beach?' . He examined my eyes and ears and then politely asked me td

stand and lower my underpants. Fifty years earlier, Dr. Philobosi · · had made his living treating Ottoman ladies in Smyrna. Proprie was an old habit with him. .

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My mind was not fuzzy, as it had been up in Petoskey. I was fulF' aware of what was happening and where the focus of medi , scrutiny lay. After I had pulled my panties down to my knees, a hd wave of embarrassment swept through me and by reflex I covere: myself with my hand. Dr. Philobosian, not entirely gently, mov~ this aside. There was something of the impatience of the old in · ,ol He forgot himself momentarily, and behind his aviator lenses his ey. glared. Still, he didn't look down at me. He gazed gallantly off at ~ far wall while feeling for information with his hands. We were·· close as dancing. Dr. Phil's breathing was noisy; his hands shook.i

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glanced down myself only once. My embarrassment had retracted me. From my angle I was a girl again, white belly, dark triangle, fore- shortened legs shaved smooth. My brassiere was bandoliered across my chest.

It took only a minute. The old Armenian, crouching, lizard- backed, ran his yellowed fingers over my parts. It was no surprise that Dr. Philobosian had never noticed anything. Even now, alerted to the possibility, he didn't seem to want to know.

"You can get dressed now;' was all he said. He turned and walked very carefully to the sink. He turned on the water and thrust his hands into the stream. They seemed to be trembling more than ever. Liberally he squirted out the antibacterial soap. "Say hello to your dad;' he said before I left the room.

Dr. Phil referred me to an endocrinologist at Henry Ford Hospi- tal. The endocrinologist tapped a vein in my arm, filling an alarming number of vials with my blood. Why all this blood was needed he didn't say. I was too frightened to ask. That night, however, I put my ear to my bedroom wall in hopes of finding out what was going on. "So what did the doctor say?" Milton was asking. ''He said Dr. Phil should have noticed when Callie was born;' Tessie answered. ''This whole thing could have been fixed bade then.'' And then Milton again: "I can't believe he'd miss something like that.'' ("Like what?" I silently asked the wall, but it didn't specify.)

Three days later we arrived in New York. Milton had booked us into a hotel called the Lochmoor in the

East Thirties. He had stayed there twenty-three years earlier as a navy ensign. Always a thrifty traveler, Milton was also encouraged by the room rates. Our stay in New York was open-ended. The doctor Mil- ton had spoken to-the specialist-refused to discuss details before he'd had a chance to examine me. "You'll like it:' Milton assured us. ''It's pretty swank, as I remember.''

It was not. We arrived from La Guardia in a taxi to find the \·Lochmoor fallen from its former glory. The desk clerk and cashier :worked behind bulletproof glass. The Viennese carpeting was wet be- , neath the dripping radiators and the mirrors had been removed, leav- Jing ghostly rectangles of plaster and ornamental screws. The elevator '\Was prewar, with gilded, curving bars lilce a birdcage. Once upon a {time, there had been an operator; no longer. We crammed our suit-

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:ases into the small space and I slid the gate closed. It J<ept coming off its trade. I had to do it three times before the electrical current would flow. Finally the contraption rpse and through the spray- painted bars we watched the floors pass by, each dim and identical ex- cept for the variation of a maid in uniform, or a room service tray outside a door, or a pair of shoes. Still, there was a feeling of ascen- sion in that old box, of rising up out of a pit, and it was a letdown to get to our floor, number eight, and find it just as drab as the lobby.

Our room had been carved out of a once-bigger suite. Now the angles of the walls were skewed. Even Tessie, pint-sized, felt con- stricted. For some reason the bathroom was nearly as large as the bedroom. The toilet stood stranded on loose tiles and ran continu- ously. The tub had a skid mark where the water drained out.

There was a queen-size bed for my parents and, in the corner, a cot set up for me. I hauled my suitcase up onto it. My suitcase was a bone of contention between Tessie and me. She had picked it out for me before our trip to Turkey. It had a floral pattern of turquoise and green blossoms which I found hideous. Since going off to private school-and hanging around the Object-my tastes had been chang- ing, becoming refined, I thought. Poor Tessie no longer knew what to buy me. Anything she chose was greeted by wails of horror. I was adamantly opposed to anything synthetic or with visible stitching. My parents found my new urge for purity amusing. Often my father would rub my shirt between his thumb and fingers and ask, "Is this preppy?"

With the suitcase Tessie had had no time to consult me, and so there it was, bearing a design lilce a place mat's. Unzipping the suit- case and flipping it open, I felt better. Inside were all the clothes I'd chosen myself: the crew neck sweaters in primary colors, the Lacoste shirts, the wide-wale corduroys. My coat was from Papagallo, lime green with horn-shaped buttons made from bone.

"Do we have to unpack or can we leave everything in our suit- cases?" f asked.

'We better unpack and put our suitc;ases in the closet;' Milton an- swered. "Give us a little more room in here."

I put my sweaters neatly in the dresser drawers, ,my socks and un- derpants, too, and hung my pants up. ftook my toiletry case into the bathroom and put it on the shelf I had brought lip gloss and per- fume with me. I wasn't certain that they were obsolete.

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I closed the bathroom door, locked it, and bent close to the mir- ror to examine my face. Two dark hairs, still short, were visible above my upper lip. I got tweezers out of my case and plucked them. This made my eyes water. My clothes felt tight. The sleeves of my sweater were too short. I combed my hair and, optimistically, desperately, smiled at myself ·"'

I knew that my situation, whatever it was, was a crisis of some kind. I could tell ~t from my parents' false, cheery behavior and from our speedy exit from home. Still, no one had said a word to me yet.. Milton and Tessie were treating me exactly as they always had- as their daughter, in other words. They acted as though my problem was medical and therefore fixable. So I began to hope so, too. Like a person with a terminal illness, I was eager to ignore the immediate symptoms, hoping for a last-minute cure. I veered back and forth be- tween hope and its opposite, a growing certainty that something ter- rible was wrong with me. But nothing made me more desperate than looking in the mirror.

I opened the door and stepped back into the room. ''I hate this hotel:' I said. ''It's gross."

"It's not too nice;' Tessie agreed.

"It used to be nicer;' said Milton. "I don't understand what hap- pened;''

'The carpet smells;'' ''Let's open a window."

"Maybe we won't have to be here that long;' Tessie said, hope- fully, wearily.

In the evening we ventured outside, looking for something to eat, and then returned to the room to watch TV: Later, after we switched off the lights, I asked from my cot, ''What are we doing tomorrow?"

''We have to go the doctor's in the morning;' said Tessie. "After that we have to see about some Broadway tickets;' said Mil-

ton. ''What do you want to see, Cal?" ''I don't care;' I said gloomily.

"I think we should see a musical;' said Tessie. ''I saw Ethel Merman in Mame once;' Milton recalled. "She came

down this big, long staircase, singing. When she finished, the place went wild. She stopped the show. So she just went right bade up the staircase and sang the song over again.''

''Would you like to see a musical, Callie?"

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''Whatever.'' "Damnedest thing I ever saw;' said Milton. ''That Ethel Merman

can really belt it out.'' No one spoke after that. We lay in the dark, in our strange beds,

until we fell asleep.

The next morning after breakfast we set off to see the specialist. My parents tried to seem excited as we left the hotel, pointing out sights from the taxi window. Milton exuded the boisterousness he reserved for all difficult situations. ''This is some place;' he said as we drove up to New York Hospital. "River view! I might just check myself in.''

Like any teenager, I was largely oblivious to the clumsy figure I cut. My stork movements, my flapping arms, my long legs kicking out my undersized feet in their fawn-colored Wallabees-all that ma- chinery clanked beneath the observation tower of my head, and I was too close to see it. My parents did. It pained them to watch me ad- vance across the sidewalk toward the hospital entrance. It was terrify- ing to see your child in the grip of unknown forces. For a year now they had been denying how I was changing, putting it down to the awkward age. "She'll grow out of it;' Milton was always telling my mother. But now they were seized with a fear that I was growing out

of control. We found the elevator and rode up to the fourth floor, then fol-

lowed the arrows to something called the Psychohormonal Unit. Milton had the office number written out on a card. Finally· we found the right room. The gray door was unmarked except for an ex- tremely small, unobtrusive sign halfway down that read:

Sexual Disorders and Gender Identity Clinic

If my parents saw the sign, they pretended not to. Milton lowered his head, bull-like, and pushed the door open.

The receptionist welcomed us ·and told us to have a seat. The waiting room was unexceptional. Chairs lined the walls, divided evenly by magazine tables, and there was the usual rubber tree expir- ing in the corner. The carpeting was institutional, with a hectic, stain- camouflaging pattern. There was even a reassuringly medicinal smell in the air. After my mother filled out the insurance forms, we were

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shown into the doctor's office. This, too, inspired confidence. An Eames chair stood behind the desk. By the window was a Le Cor- busier chaise, made of chrome and cowhide. The bookshelves were filled with medical books and journals and the walls tastefully hung with art. Big-city sophisticatioh attuned to a European sensibility. The surround of a triumphant psychoanalytic world-view. Not to mention the East River view out the windows. We were a long way from Dr. PhiPs office with its amateur oils and Medicaid cases.

It was two or three minutes before we noticed anything out of the ordinary. At first the curios and etchings had blended in with the scholarly clutter of the office. But as we sat waiting for the doctor, we became aware of a silent commotion all around us. It was lilce staring at the ground and realizing, suddenly, that it is swarming with ants. The restful doctor's office was churning with activity. The paper- weight on his desk; for instance, was not a simple, inert rock but a tiny priapus carved from stone. The miniatures on the walls revealed their subject matter under closer observation. Beneath yellow sillc tents, on paisley pillows, Mughal princes acrobatically copulated with multiple partners, keeping their turbans in place. Tessie blushed, looking; while Milton squinted; and I hid inside my hair as usual. We tried to look someplace else and so looked at the bookshelves. But here it wasn't safe either. Amid a dulling surround of issues of JAMA and The New England Journal of Medicine were some eye- popping titles. One, with entwining snalces on the spine, was called Erotosexual Pair Bonding. There was a purple, pamphlety thing enti- tled Ritualized Homosexuality: Three Field Studies. On the desk itself, with a bookmark in it, was a manual called Hap-Penis: Surgical Tech- niques in Female-to-Male Sex Reassignment. If the sign on the front door hadn't already, Luce's office made it clear just what kind of spe- cialist my parents had brought me to .see. (And, worse, to see me.) There were sculptures, too. Reproductions from the temple at Ku- jaraho occupied corners of the room along with huge jade plants. Against the waxy green foliage, melon-breasted Hindu women bent over double, offering up orifices lilce prayers to the well-endowed men who answered them. An overloaded switchboard, a dirty game of Twister everywhere you turned.

'Will you look at this place?" Tessie whispered. "Sort of unusual decor;' said Milton.

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And I: ''What are we doing here?" It was right then that the door opened and Dr. Luce presented

himself At that stage, I didn't know about his glamour status in the field.

I had no idea of the frequency with which Luce's name appeared in the relevant journals and papers. But I saw right away that Luce wasn't your normal-looking doctor. Instead of a medical coat he wore a suede vest with fringe. Silver hair touched the collar of his beige turtleneck. His pants were flared and on his feet were a pair of anlde boots with zippers on the sides. He had eyeglasses, too, silver wire-rims, and a gray mustache.

''Welcome to New York;' he said. ''I'm Dr. Luce." He shook my father's hand, then my mother's, and finally came to me. ''You must be Calliope.'' He was smiling, relaxed. ''Let's see if I can remember my mythology. Calliope was one of the Muses, right?"

"Right.'' "In charge of what?" "Epic poetry.'' ''You can't beat that;' said Luce. He was trying to act casual, but

I could see he was excited. I was an extraordinary case, after all. He was taking his time, savoring me. To a scientist like Luce I was noth- ing less than a sexual or genetic Kaspar Hauser. There he was, a famous sexologist, a guest on Dick Cavett, a regular contributor to Playboy, and suddenly on his doorstep, arriving out of the woods of Detroit like the Wtld Boy of Aveyron, was me, Calliope Stepha- nides, age fourteen. I was a living experiment dressed in white corduroys and a Fair Isle sweater. This sweater, pale yellow, with a floral wreath at the neck, told Luce that I refuted nature in just the way his theory predicted. He must have hardly been able to contain himself, meeting me. He was a brilliant, charming, work-obsessed man, and watched me from behind his desk with keen eyes. While he chatted, spealcing primarily to my parent.<;, gaining their confidence, Luce was nevertheless making mental notes. He registered my tenor voice. He noted that I S?-t with one leg tucked under me. He watched ; how I examined my nails, curling my fingers into my palm. He paid ·" attention to the way I coughed, laughed, scratched my head, spoke; in sum, all the external manifestations of what he called my gender identity.

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He kept up the calm manner, as if I had come to the Clinic with nothing more than a sprained ankle. ''The first thing I'd like to do is give Calliope a short examination. If you'd care to wait here in my of- fice, Mr. and Mrs. Stephanides.'' He stood up. ''Would you come with me please, Calliope?"

I got up from my chair. Luce watched as the various segments, like those of a collapsible ruler, unfolded themselves, and I attained my full height, an inch taller than he was himself

''We'll be right here, honey;' Tessie said. ''We're not going anywhere;' said Milton.

Peter Luce was considered the world's leading authority on human hermaphroditism. The Sexual Disorders and Gender Identity Clinic, which he founded in 1968, had become the foremost facility in the world for the study and treatment of conditions of ambiguous gen- der. He was the author of a major sexological work, The Oracular Vulva) which was standard in a variety of disciplines ranging from ge- netics and pediatrics to psychology. He had written a column by the same name for Playboy from August 1972 to December 1973 in which the conceit was that a personified and all-knowing female pu- dendum answered the queries of male readers with witty and some- times sibylline responses. Hugh Hefner had come across Peter Luce's name in the papers in connection with a demonstration for sexual freedom. Six Columbia students had staged an orgy in a tent on the main green, which the cops broke up, and when asked what he thought about such activity on campus, Pro£ Peter Luce, 46, had been quoted as saying, ''I'm in favor of orgies wherever they happen.'' That caught Ref's eye. Not wanting to replicate Xaviera Hollander's "Call Me Madam" column in Penthouse, Hefner saw Luce's contribu- tion as being devoted to the scientific and historical side of sex. Thus, in her first three issues, the Oracular Vulva delivered disquisitions on the erotic art of the Japanese painter Hiroshi Yamamoto, the epi- demiology of syphilis, and the sex life of St. Augustine. The column proved popular, though intelligent queries were always hard to come by, the readership being more interested in the "Playboy Advisor'' 's cunnilingus tips or remedies for premature ejaculation. Finally, Hefner told Luce to write his own questions, which he was only too glad to do.

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Peter Luce had appeared on Phil Donahue along with two her- maphrodites and a transsexual to discuss both the medical and psy- chological aspects of these conditions.. On that program, Phil Donahue said, "Lynn Harris was born and raised a girl. You won the Miss Newport Beach Contest in 1964 in good old Orange County, . California? Boy, wait till they hear this. You lived as a woman to the j age of twenty-nine and then you switched to living as a man. He has} the anatomical characteristics of both a man and a woman. If I'm<{ lyin', I'm dyin' . "

He also said, "Here's what's not so funny. These live, irreplaceable , sons and daughters of God, human beings all, want you to know, among other things, that that's exactly what they are, human beings?' "'

Because of certain genetic and hormonal conditions, it was some- times very difficult to determine the sex of a newborn baby. Con- fronted with such a child, ths Spartans had left the infant on a rocky hillside to die. Luce's own forebears, the English, didn't even lilce to mention the subject, and might never have done so had the nuisance of mysterious genitalia not thrown a wrench into the smooth work- ings of inheritance law. Lord Coke, the great British jurist of the sev- enteenth century, tried to clear up the matter of who would get the landed estates by declaring that a person should "be either male or fe- male, and it shall succeed according to the kind of sex which doth prevail?' Of course, he di<in't specify any precise method for deter- ,; mining which sex did prevail. For most of the twentieth century, j medicine had been using the same primitive diagnostic criterion of} sex formulated by Klebs way back in 1876. Klebs had maintained'~ that a person's gonads determined sex. In cases of ambiguous gender,:./ you looked at the gonadal tissue under the microscope. If it was tes-1~, ticular, the person was male; if ovarian, female. The hunch here wasi that a person's gonads would orchestrate sexual development, espe-l cially at puberty. But it turned out to be more complicated than that'.~ Klebs had begun the task, but the world had to wait another hundred :J years for Peter Luce to come along and finish it.

In 1955, Luce published an article called "Many Roads Lead to~; Rome: Sexual Concepts of Human Hermaphroditism?' In twenty- • five pages of forthright, high-toned prose, Luce argued that gender is determined by a variety of influences: chromosomal sex; gonadal sex; hormones; internal genital structures; external genitals; and, most

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/important, the sex of rearing. Drawing on studies of patients at the ;pediatric endocrine clinic at New York Hospital, Luce was able to .;;compile charts demonstrating how these various factors came into (·play, and showing that a patient's gonadal sex often didn't determine ims or her gender identity. The article made a big splash. Within }months, pretty much everyone had given up Klebs's criterion for

t'.Luce's criteria. ~

: On the strength of this success, Luce was given the opportunity :}io open the Psychohormonal Unit at New York Hospital. In those ~' days he saw mostly kids with adrenogenital syndrome, the most rcommon form of female hermaphroditism. The hormone cortisol, lrecently synthesized in the lab, had been found to arrest the viriliza- ··· ti.on these girls normally underwent, allowing them to develop as i'normal females. The endocrinologists administered the cortisol .µid ' Luce oversaw the girls' psychosexual development. He learned a lot.

In a decade of solid, original research, Luce made his second great discovery: that gender identity is established very early on in life, about the age of two. Gender was lilce a native tongue; it didn't exist before birth but was imprinted in the brain during childhood, never disappearing. Children learn to spealc Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.

He published this theory in 1967, in an article in the The New . England Journal of Medicine entitled "Early Establishment of Gender

Identity: The Terminal Twos:' After that, his reputation reached the .stratosphere. The funding flowed in, from the Rockefeller Founda- tion, the Ford Foundation, and the N.I.S. It was a great time to be a sexologist. The Sexual Revolution provided new opportunities for the enterprising sex researcher. It was a matter of national interest, for a few years there, to examine the mechanics of the female orgasm. Or to plumb the psychological reasons why certain men exhibited themselves on the street. In 1968, Dr. Luce opened the Sexual Disor- ders and Gender Identity Clinic, Luce treated everybody: the webbed-neclced girl teens with Turner's syndrome, who had only one sex chromosome, a lonely X; the leggy beauties with Androgen In- sensitivity; or the XYY boys, who tended to be dreamers and loners. When babies with ambiguous genitalia were born at the hospital, Dr. Luce was called in to discuss the matter with the bewildered parents. Luce got the transsexuals, too. Everyone came to the Clinic, with the

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·esult that Luce had at his disposal a body of research material- of iving, breathing specimens-no scientist had ever had before.

And now Luce had me. In the examination room, he told me to get undressed and put on a paper gown. After taking some blood ( only one vial, thankfully), he had me lie down on a table with my legs up in stirrups. There was a pale green curtain, the same color as my gown, that could be pulled across the table, dividing my upper and lower halves. Luce didn't close it that first day. Only later, when there was an audience.

''This shouldn't hurt but it might feel a little funny." I stared up at the ring light on the ceiling. Luce had another light

on a stand, which he angled to suit his purposes. I could feel its heat between my legs as he pressed and prodded me.

For the first few minutes I concentrated on the circular light, but finally, drawing in my chin, I looked_ down to see that Luce was hold- ing the crocus between his thumb and forefinger. He was stretching it out with one hand while measuring it with the other. Then he let go of the ruler and made notes. He didn't look shocked or appalled. In fact he examined me with great curiosity, almost connoisseurship. There was an element of awe or appreciation in his face. He took notes as he proceeded but made no small talk. His concentration was intense.

After a while, still crouching between my legs, Luce turned his head to search for another instrument. Between the sight lines of my raised knees his ear appeared, an amazing organ all its own, whorled and flanged, translucent in the bright lights. His ear was very close to me. It seemed for a moment as though Luce were listening at my source. As though some riddle were being imparted to him from be- tween my legs. But then he found what he had been looking for and turned back.

He began to probe inside. "Relax;' he said. He applied a lubricant, huddled in closer. "Relax:' There was a hint of annoyance, of command in his voice. I took a

deep breath and did the best I could. Luce poked inside. For a mo- ment it felt merely strange, as he'd suggested. But then a sharp pain shot through me. I jerked back, crying out.

"Sorry?' Nevertheless, he kept on. He placed one hand on my pelvis to

steady me. He probed in farther, though he avoided the painful area. My eyes were welling with tears.

''Almost finished;' he said. But he was only getting started.

The' chief imperative in cases like mine was to show no doubt as to the gender of the child in question. You did not tell the parents of a newborn, "Your baby is a hermaphrodite?' Instead, you said, ''Your daughter was born with a clitoris that is a little larger than a normal girl's. We'll need to do surgery to make it the right size.'' Luce felt that parents weren't able to cope with an ambiguous gender assign- ment. You had to tell them if they had a boy or a girl. Which meant that, before you said anything, you had to be sure what the prevail- ing gender was.

Luce could not do this with me yet. He had received the results of the endocrinological tests performed at Henry Ford Hospital, and so knew of my XY karyotype, my high plasma testosterone levels, and the absence in my blood of dihydrotestosterone. In other words, be- fore even seeing me, Luce was able to make an educated guess that I was a male pseudohermaphrodite-genetically male but appearing otherwise, with 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome. But that, ac- cording to Luce's thinking, did not mean that I had a male gender identity.

My being a teenager complicated things. In addition to chromo- somal and hormonal factors, Luce had to consider my sex of rearing, which had been female. He suspected that the tissue mass he had pal- pated inside me was testicular. Still, he couldn't be sure until he had looked at a sample under a microscope.

All this must have been going through Luce's mind as he brought me back to the waiting room. He told me he wanted to spealc to my parents and that he would send them out when he was finished. His intensity had lessened and he was friendly again, smiling and patting me on the back. ,.

In his office Luce sat down in his Eames chair, looked up at Mil- ton and Tessie, and adjusted his glasses.

"Mr. Stephanides, Mrs. Stephanides, I'll be franlc. This is a com- plicated case. By complicated I don't mean irremediable. We have a

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range of effective treatments for cases of this kind. But before rm ready to begin treatment there are a number of questions I have to answer?'

My mother and father were sitting only a foot apart during this speech, but each heard something different. Milton heard the words that were there. He heard "treatment'' and "effective?' Tessie, on the other hand, heard the words that weren't there. The doctor hadn't said my name, for instance. He hadn't said "Calliope" or "Callie?' He hadn't said "daughter;' either. He didn't use any pronouns at all.

"fll need to run further tests;' Luce was continuing. ''I'll need to perform a complete psychological assessment. Once I have the neces- sary information, then we can discuss in detail the proper course of treatment?'

Milton was already nodding. ''What kind of time line are we talk- ing about, Doctor?"

Luce jutted out a thoughtful lower lip. "I want to redo the lab tests, just to be sure. Those results will be back tomorrow. The psy- chological evaluation will take longer. rll need to see your child every day for at least a week, maybe two. Also it would be helpful if you could give me any childhood photographs or family movies you might have?'

Milton turned to Tessie. ''When does Callie start school?" Tessie didn't hear him. She was distracted by Luce's phrase: "your

child?' ''What kind of information are you trying to get, Doctor?" Tessie

asked. ''The blood tests will tell us hormone levels. The psychological as-

sessment is routine in cases like this." ''You think it's some kind of hormone thing?" Milton asked. "A

hormone imbalance?" ''We'll know after I've had time to do what I need to do;' said

Luce. Milton stood up and shook hands with the doctor. The consulta-

tion was over.

Keep in mind: neither Milton nor Tessie had seen me undressed for years. How were they to know? And not knowing, how could they imagine? The information available to them was all secondary stuff-

414

my husky voice, my flat chest-but these things were far from per- suasive. A hormonal thing. It could have been no more serious than that. So my father believed, or wanted to believe, and so he tried to convince Tessie.

I had my own resistance. ''Why does he have to do a psychologi- cal evaluation?" I asked. "It's not like I'm crazy?'

''The doctor said it was routine?' "But why?" With this question I had hit upon the crux of the matter. My

mother has since told me that she intuited the real reason for the psy- chological assessment, but chose not to dwell on it. Or, rather, didn't choose. Let Milton choose for her. Milton preferred to treat the problem pragmatically. There was no sense in worrying about a psy- chological assessment that could only confirm what was obvious: that I was a normal, well-adjusted girl. ''He probably bills the i.qsur- ance extra for the psychological stuff," Milton said. "Sorry, Cal, but you'll have to put up with it. Maybe he can cure your neuroses. Got any neuroses? Now's your time to let 'em out?' He put his arms around me, squeezed hard, and roughly kissed the side of my head.

Milto11. was so convinced that everything was going to be okay that on Tuesday morning he flew down to Florida on business. ''No sense cooling my heels in this hotel;' he told us.

''You just want to get out of this pit;' I said. "I'll malce it up to you. Why don't you and your mother go out

for a fancy dinner tonight. Anyplace you want. We're saving a couple bucks on this room, so you gals can splurge. Why don't you take Cal- lie to Delmonico's, Tess?'

''What's Delmonico's?" I asked. "It's a steak joint?' "I want lobster. And baked Alaska;' I said. "Baked Alaska! Maybe they have that, too?' Milton left, and my mother and I tried to spend his money. We

went shopping at Bloomingdale's. We had high tea at the Plaza. We never made it to Delmonico's, preferring a moderately priced Italian restaurant near the Lochmoor, where we felt more comfortable. We ate there every night, doing our best to pretend we were on a real trip, a vacation. Tessie drank more wine than usual and got tipsy, and when she went to the bathroom I drank her wine myse1£

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Normally the most expressive thing about my mother's face was he gap between her front teeth. When she was listening to me, fessie's tongue often pressed against that divot, that gate. This was :he signal of her attention. My mother always paid great attention to whatever I said. And if I told her something funny, then her tongue iropped away, her head fell back, her mouth opened wide, and there were her front teeth, riven and ascendant.

Every night at the Italian restaurant I tried to malce this happen. In the mornings, Tessie took me to the Clinic for my appoint-

ments.

''What are your hobbies, Callie?" "Hobbies?" "Is there anything you especially like to do?" "I'm not really a hobby-type person.'' ''What about spo~? Do you like any sports?" "Does Ping-Pong count?" "I'll put it down.'' Luce smiled from behind his desk. I was on the

Le Corbusier daybed across the room, lounging on the cowhide. ''What about boys?" ''What about them?" "Is there a boy at school you like?" "I guess you've never been to my school, Doctor.'' He checked his file. "Oh, it's a girls' school, isn't it?" "Yup.'' ''Are you sexually attracted to girls?" Luce said this quickly. It was

like a tap from a rubber hammer. But I stifled my reflex. He put down his pen and knit his fingers together. He leaned for-

ward and spoke softly. "I want you to know that this is all-,between us, Callie. I'm not going to tell your parents anything that you tell me here.''

I was tom. Luce in his leather chair, with his longish hair and an- kle boots, was the kind of adult a kid might open up to. He was as old as my father but in league with the younger generation. I longed to tell him about the Object. I longed to tell somebody, anybody. My feelings for her were still so strong they rushed up, my throat. But I held them back, wary. I didn't believe this was all private.

''Your mother says you have a close relationship with a friend of

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yours;' Luce began again. He said the Object's name. "Do you feel sexually attracted to her? Or have you had sexual relations with her?"

"We're just friends;' I insisted, a little too loudly. I tried again in a quieter voice. "She's my best friend.'' In response Luce's right eye- brow rose from behind his glasses. It came out of hiding as though it, too, wanted to get a good look at me. And then I found a way out:

"I had sex with her brother;' I confessed. ''He's a junior.'' Again Luce showed neither surprise, disapproval, or interest. He

made a note on his pad, nodding once. '~d did you enjoy it?" Here I could tell the truth. "It hurt;' I said. ''Plus I was scared

about getting pregnant.'' Luce smiled to himself, jotting in his notebook. "Not to worry;'

· he said. That was how it went. Every day for an hour I sat in Luce's office

and talked about my life, my feelings, my likes and dislikes. Luce asked all kinds of questions. The answers I gave were sometimes·not as important as the way I answered them. He watched my facial ex- pressions; he noted my style of argument. Females tend to smile at their interlocutors more than males do. Females pause and look for signs of agreement before continuing. Males just look into the mid- dle distance and hold forth. Women prefer the anecdotal, men the deductive. It was impossible to be in Luce's line of work without falling back on such stereotypes. He knew their limitations. But they were clinically useful.

When I wasn't being questioned about my life and feelings, I was writing about them. Most days I sat typing up what Luce called my "Psychological Narrative.'' That early autobiography didn't begin: "I was born twice.'' Flashy, rhetorical openings were something I had to get the hang of. It started simply, with the words "My name is Cal- liope Stephanides. I am fourteen years old. Going on fifteen.'' I began with the facts and followed them as long as I could.

Sing, Muse, how cunning Calliope wrote on that battered Smith Corona! Sing how the typewriter hummed and trembled at her psy- chiatric revelations! Sing of its two cartridges, one for typing and one for correcting, that so eloquently represented her predicament, poised between the print of genetics and the Wite-Out of surgery. Sing of the weird smell the typewriter gave off, like WD-40 and salami, and of the Day-Glo flower decal the last person who'd used it

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had applied, and of the broken F key, which stuck. On that newfan- gled but soon-to-be obsolete machine I wrote not so much like a kid from the Midwest as a minister's daughter from Shropshire. I still have a copy of my psychological narrative somewhere. Luce pub- lished it in his collected works, omitting my name. "I would like to tell of my life;' it runs at one point, "and of the experiences that malce myriad my joys and sorrows upon this planet we call Earth.'' In de- scribing my mother, I say, ''Her beauty is the kind which seems to be thrown into relief by grie£'' A few pages on there comes the subhead- ing "Calumnies Caustic and Catty by Callie.'' Half the time I wrote like bad George Eliot,' the other half like bad Salinger. "If there's one thing I hate it's television.'' Not true: I loved television! But on that Smith Corona I quicldy discovered that telling the truth wasn't nearly as much fun as malcing things up. I, also knew that I was writing for an audience-Dr. Luce-and that if I seemed normal enough, he might send me back home. This explains the passages about my love of cats ("feline affection"), the pie recipes, and my deep feelings for natur~.

Luce ate it all up. It's true; I have to give credit where credit's due. Luc~ was the first person to encourage my writing. Every night he read through what I had typed up during the day. He didn't know, of course, that I was malcing up most of what I wrote, pretending to be the all-American daughter my parents wanted me to be. I fictional- ized early "sex play'' and later crushes on boys; I transferred my feel- ing for the Object onto Jerome and it was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.

Luce was interested in the gender giveaways of my prose, of course. He measured my jouissance against my linearity. He picked up on my Victorian flourishes, my antique diction, my girls' school pro- priety. These all weighed heavily in his final assessment.

There was also the diagnostic tool of pornography. One after- noon when I arrived for my session with Dr. Luce, there was a movie projector in his office. A screen had been set up before the bookcase, and the blinds drawn. In syrupy light Luce was feeding the celluloid through the sprocket wheel.

''Are you going to show me my dad's movie' again? From when I was little?"

''Today I've got something a little different;' said Luce. I took up my customary position on the chaise, my arms folded

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behind me on the cowhide. Dr. Luce switched off the lights and soon the movie began.

It was about a pizza delivery girl. The title was, in fact, Annie De- livers to Your Door. In the first scene, Annie, wearing cutoffs and a midriff-revealing, Ellie-May blouse, gets out of her car before an oceanside house. She rings the bell. No one is at home. Not wanting the pizza to go to waste, she sits down next to the pool and begins to eat.

The production values were low. The pool boy, when he arrived, was badly lit. It was hard to hear what he was saying. But soon enough he was no longer saying anything. Annie had begun to re- move her clothes. She was down on her knees. The pool boy was nalced, too, and then they were on the steps, in the pool, on the div- ing board, pumping, writhing. I closed my eyes. I didn't like the raw meat colors of the film. It wasn't at all beautiful like the tiny paintings in Luce's office. ·

In a straighiforward voice Luce asked from the darkness, ''Which one turns you on?"

"Excuse me?" "Which one turns you on? The woman or the man?" The true answer was neither. But truth would not do. Sticlcing to my cover story, I managed to get out, very quietly,

''The boy.'' ''The pool boy? That's good. I dig the pizza girl myself. She's got

a great bod.'' A sheltered child once, from a reserved Presbyterian home, Luce was now liberated, free of antisexualism. "She's got in- credible tits;' he said. ''You like her tits? Do they turn you on?"

''No.'' ''The guy's cock turns you on?" I nodded, barely, wishing it would be over. But it was not over for

a while yet. Annie had other pizzas to deliver. Luce wanted to watch each one.

Sometimes he brought other doctors to see me. A typical unveiling went as follows. I was summoned from my writing studio in the back of the Clinic. In Luce's office two men in business suits were waiting. They stood when I came in. Luce made introductions. "Callie, I want to you meet Dr. Craig and Dr. Wmters.''

The doctors shook my hand. It was their first bit of data: my

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hartdshake. Dr. Craig squeezed hard, Wmters less so. They were care- ful about not seeming too eager. Like men meeting a fashion model, they trained their eyes away from my body and pretended to be in- terested in me as a person. Luce said, "Callie's been here at the Clinic for just about a week now:''

"How do you like New York?" asked Dr. Craig. "I've hardly seen it?' The doctors gave me sightseeing suggestions. The atmosphere was

light, friendly. Luce put his hand on the.small of my back. Men have an annoying way of doing that. They touch your back as though there's a handle there, and direct you where they want you to go. Or they place their hand on top of your head, paternally. Men and their hands. You've got to watch them every minute. Luce's hand was now pro- claiming: Here she is. My stat attraction. The terrible thing was that I responded to it; I liked the feel of Luce's hand on my back. I liked the attention. Here were all these people who wanted to meet me.

Pretty soon Luce's hand was escorting me down the hall into the examination room. I knew the drill. Behind the screen I undressed while the doctors waited. The green paper gown was folded on the chair.

''The family comes from where, Peter?" ''Turkey. Originally?' "I'm only acquainted with the Papua New Guinea studi' said

Craig. ''Among the Sambia, right?" asked Wmters. ''Yes, that's right;~ Luce answered. ''There's a high incidence of the

mutation there as well. The Sambia are interesting from a sexological point of view, too. They practice ritualized homosexuality. Sambia males consider contact with females highly polluting. So they've or- ganized social structures to limit exposure as much as possible. The men and boys sleep on one side of the village, the women and girls on the other side. The men go into the women's longhouse only to procreate. In and out. In fact, the Sambia word for 'vagina' translates literally as 'that thing which is truly no good.' "

Soft chuckling came from the other side of the screen. I came out, feeling awkward. I was taller than everyone else in the

room, though I weighed much less. The floor felt cold against my bare feet as I crossed to the exam table and jumped up.

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I lay back. Without having to be told, I lifted my legs and fit my heels in the gynecological stirrups. The room had gone ominously silent. The three doctors came forward, staring down. Their heads formed a trinity above me. Luce pulled the curtain across the table.

They bent over me, studying my parts, while Luce led a guided tour. I didn't know what most of the words meant but after the third or fourth time I could recite the list by heart. ''Muscular habitus ... no gynecomastia ... hypospadias ... urogenital sinus ... blind vagi- nal pouch . . .'' These were my claim to fame. I didn't feel famous, however. In fact, behind the curtain, I no longer felt as if I were in the room.

"How old is she?" Dr. Winters asked. "Fourteen;' Luce answered. "She'll be fifteen in January?' "So your position is that chromosomal status has been completely

overridden by rearing?" ''I think that's pretty clear.'' As I lay there, letting Luce, in rubber gloves, do what he had to

do, I got a sense of things. Luce wanted to impress the men with the importance of his work. He needed funding to keep the clinic run- ning. The surgery he performed on transsexuals wasn't a selling point over at the March of Dimes. To get them interested you had to pull at the heartstrings. You had to put a face on suffering. Luce was try- ing to do that with me. I was perfect, so polite, so midwestern. No unseemliness attached itself to me, no hint of cross-dresser bars or ads in the back of louche magazines.

Dr. Craig wasn't convinced. "Fascinating case, Peter. No question. But my people will want to know the applications.''

''It's a very rare condition;' Luce admitted. "Exceedingly rare. But in terms of research, its importance can't be overstated. For the rea- sons I outlined in my office.'' Luce remained vague for my benefit, but still persuasive enough for theirs. He hadn't gotten where he was without certain lobbyist gifts; Meanwhile I was there and not there, cringing at Luce's touch, sprouting goose bumps, and worrying that I hadn't washed properly.

I remember this, too. A long narrow room on a different floor of the hospital. A riser set up at one end before a butterfly light. The photographer putting film in his camera.

"Okay, I'm ready;' he said.

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,.;...,,,'

j

I dropped my robe. Almost used to. it now, I climbed up on the riser before the measuring chart.

"Hold your arms out a little.'' ''Like this?" ''That's good. I don't want a shadow.'' He didn't tell me to smile. The textbook publishers would make

sure to cover my face. The black box: a fig leaf in reverse, concealing , identity while leaving shame exposed.

Every night Milton called us in our room. Tessie put on a bright voice for him. Milton tried to sound happy when I got on the line. But I took the opportunity to whine and complain.

"I'm sick of this hotel. When can we go home?" "Soon as you're better;' Milton said. When it was time for sleep, we drew the window. curtains and

turned off the lights. "Good night, honey. See you in the morning.'' ''Night.'' But I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about that word: "better.''

What did my father mean? What were they going to do to me? Street sounds made it up to the room, curiously distinct, echoing off the stone building opposite. I listened to the police sirens, the angry horns. My pillow was thin. It smelled like a smoker. Across the strip of carpet my mother was already asleep. Before my conception, she had agreed to my father's outlandish plan to determine my sex. She had done this so that she wouldn't be alone, so that she would have a girlfriend in the house. And I had been that friend. I had always been close to my mother. Our temperaments were alike. We liked nothing better than to sit on park benches and watch the faces go by. Now the face I was watching was Tessie's in the other bed. It looked white, blank, as if her cold cream had removed not only her makeup but her personality. Tessie's eyes were moving, though; under the lids they skated bade and forth. Callie couldn't imagin~ the things Tessie was seeing in her dreams bade then. But I can. Tessie was dreaming a fam- ily dream. A version of the nightmares Desdemona had after listening to Fard's sermons. Dreams of the germs of infants bubblin~ dividing. Of hideous creatures growing up from pale foam. Tessie didn't allow herself to think about such things during the day, so they came to her at

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night. Was it her fault? Should she have resisted Milton when he tried to bend nature to his will? Was there really a God after all, and did He punish people on Earth? These Old World superstitions had been banished from my mother's conscious mind, but they still oper- ated in her dreams. From the other bed I watched the play of these dark forces on my mother's sleeping face.

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LOOHifiG ffiVSELF UP In UJEBSTER'S

+

~ tossed and turned every night~ unable to sleep straight through. I was like the princess and the pea. A pellet of disquiet kept unset- tling me. Sometimes I awoke with the feeling that a spotlight had

been trained on me while I slept. It was as if my ether body had been conversing with angels, somewhere up near the ceiling. When I opened my eyes they fled. But I could hear the traces of the commu- nication, the fading echoes of the crystal bell. Some essential infor- mation was rising from the depths of my being. This information was on the tip of my tongue and yet never surfaced. One thing was cer- tain: it was all connected with the Object somehow. I lay awake thinking about her, wondering how she was, and pining, grieving.

I thought of Detroit, too, of its vacant lots of pale Osiris grass springing up betvv-een the condemned houses and those not yet con- demned, and of the river with its iron runoff, the dead carp :floating on the surface, white bellies flaking. I thought of fishermen standing on the concrete freighter docks with their bait buckets and tallboys, the baseball game on the radio. It's often said that a traumatic experi- . ence early in life marks a person forever, pulls her out of line, saying, "Stay there. Don't move:" My time at the Clinic did that to me. I feel a direct line extending from that girl with her knees steepled beneath the hotel blankets to this person writing now in an Aeron chair. Hers was the duty to live out a mythical life in the actual world, mine to tell about it now. I didn't have the resources at fourteen, didn't know

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enough, hadn't been to the Anatolian mountain the Greeks call Olym- puFs and the Turks Uludag, just like the soft drink. I hadn't gotten old enough yet to realize that living sends a person not into the future but back into the past, to childhood and before birth, finally, to commune with the dead. You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father. From there it's only a quick jump to your grand- parents, and then before you know it you're time-traveling. In this life we grow backwards. It's always the gray-haired tourists on Italian buses who can tell you something about the Etruscans.

In the end, it took Luce tvv-o weeks to make his determination about me. He scheduled an appointment with my parents for the fol- lowing Monday.

Milton had been jetting around during the tvv-o weeks, checking on his Hercules franchises, but on the Friday preceding the appoint- ment he flew back to New York. We spent the weekend spiritlessly sightseeing, assailed by unspoken anxieties. On Monday morning my parents dropped me off at the New York Public Library while they went to see Dr. Luce.

My father had dressed that morning with special care. Despite an outvv-ard show of tranquillity, Milton was beset by an unaccustomed feeling of dread, and so armored himself in his most commanding clothes: over his plump body, a charcoal pinstripe suit; around his bullfrog neclc, a Countess Mara necktie; and in the buttonholes of his shirtsleeves, his "lucky" Greek Drama cuff linlcs. Lilce our Acropolis night-light, the cuff links had come from Jaclcie Halas's souvenir shop in Greektown. Milton wore them whenever he met with banlc loan officers or auditors from the IRS. That Monday morning, however, he had trouble putting the cuff links in; his hands were not steady enough. In exasperation he asked Tessie to do it. ''What's the mat- ter?" she asked tenderly. But Milton snapped, ''Just put the cuff links in, will you?" He held out his arms, loolcing away, embarrassed by his body's weakness .

Silently Tessie inserted the linlcs, tragedy in one sleeve, comedy in the other. As we came out of the hotel that morning they glittered in the early morning sun, and under the influence of those tvv-o-sided accessories, what happened next took on contrasting tones. There was tragedy, certainly, in Milton's expression as they left me off at the library. During Milton's time away, his image of me had reverted to

425

; ..... ,

! girl I'd been a year earlier. Now he faced the real me again. He ,v my ungainly movements as I climbed the library steps, the padness of my shoulders inside my Papagallo coat. Watching from : cab, Milton came face-to-face with the essence of tragedy, which something determined before you're born, something you can't es- pe or do anything about, no matter how hard you try. And Tessie, used to feeling the world through her husband, saw that my prob-

m was getting worse, was accelerating. Their hearts were wrung ith anguish, the anguish of having children, a vulnerability as aston- hing as the capacity for love that parenthood brings, in a cuff link t all its own ...

. . . But now the cab was driving away, Milton was wiping his ~ow with his handkerchief; and the grinning face in his right sleeve lllle into view, for there was a comic aspect to events that day, too. here was comedy in the way Mil):On, while still worrying about me, :pt one eye on the rocketing taxi meter. At the Clinic, there was )medy in the way Tessie, idly picking up a waiting-room magazine, )und herself reading about the juvenile sexual rehearsal play of rhe- Js monkeys. There was even a brand of harsh .satire in my parents' uest itself, because it typified the American belief that everything an be solved by doctors. All this comedy, however, is retrospective. ~ Milton and Tessie prepared to see Dr. Luce, a hot foam was rising rr their stomachs. Milton was thinking back to his early navy days, to us time in the landing craft. This was just like that. Any minute the loor was going to drop away and they would have to plunge into he churning night surf ...

In his office Luce got straight to the point. ''Let me review the ~cts of your daughter's case:' he said. Tessie noted the change at )nee. Daughter. He had said "daughter?'

The sexologist was looking reassuringly medical that morning. Dver his cashmere turtleneck he wore an actual white coat. In his b.and he held a sketchpad. His ballpoint pen bore the name of a phar- maceutical company. The blinds were drawn, the light low. The cou- ples in the Mughal miniatures had modestly covered themselves in shadow. Sitting in his designer chair, with tomes and journals rising behind him, Dr. Luce appeared serious, full of expertise, as was his speech. ''What I'm drawing here;' he began, "are the fetal genital structures. In other words, this is what a baby's genitals look like in

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tl1e womb, in the first few weeks after conception. Male or female, it's '<lil the same. These two circles here are what we call the all- purpose gonads. This little squiggle here is a Wolffian duct. And this other squiggle is a Milllerian duct. Okay? The thing to keep in mind is that everybody starts out lilce this. We're all born with potential boy parts and girl parts. You, Mr. Stephanides, Mrs. Stephanides, me-everybody. Now''-he started drawing again-"as the fetus de- velop~ in the womb, what happens is that hormones and enzymes are released-let's malce them arrows. What do these hormones and en- zymes do? Well, they turn these circles and squiggles into either boy parts or girl parts. See this circle, the all-purpose gonad? It can be- come either an ovary or a testis. And this squiggly Milllerian duct can either wither up"-he scratched it out~"or grow into a uterus, fal- lopian rubes, and the inside of the vagina. This Wolffian duct can ei- ther wither away or grow into a seminal vesicle, epididymis, and vas deferens. Depending on the hormonal and enzymatic influences?' Luce lookecl up and smiled. ''You don't have to worry about the terminology. The main thing to remember is this: every baby has Milllerian structures, which are potential girl parts,. and Wolffian structures, which are potential boy parts. Those are the internal geni- talia. But the same thing goes for the external genitalia. A penis is just a very large clitoris. They grow from the same root?'

Dr. Luce stopped once more. He folded his hands. My parents, leaning forward in the chairs, waited.

''As I explained, any determination of gender identity must talce into account a host of factors. The most important, in your daugh- ter's case"-there it was again, confidently proclaimed-"is that she has been raised for fourteen years as a girl and ,indeed thinks of her- self as female. Her interests, gestures, psychosexual malceup-all these are female. Are you with me so far?"

Milton and Tessie nodded. "Due to her 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, Callie's body does not

respond to dihydrotestosterone. What this means is that, in utero, she followed a primarily female line of development. Especially in terms of the external genitalia. That, coupled with her being brought up as a girl, resulted in her thinking, acting, and looking lilce a girl. The problem came when she started to go through puberty. At pu- berty, the other androgen-testosterone-started to exert a strong ef-

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feet. The simplest way to put it is like this: Callie is a girl who has a little too much male hormone. We want to correct that?'

Neither Milton nor Tessie said a word. They weren't following everything the doctor was saying but, as people do with doctors, they were attentive to his manner, trying to see how serious things were. Luce seemed optimistic, confident, and Tessie and Milton began to be filled with hope.

"That's the biology. It's a very rare genetic condition, by the way. The only other populations where we know of this mutation express- ing itself are in the Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea, and southeastern Turkey. Not that far from the village your parents came from. Ab.out three hundred miles, in fact?' Luce removed his silver glasses. "Do you know of any family member who may have had a similar genital appearance to your daughter's?"

"Not that we know of," said Milton. 'When did your parents immigrate?" ''Nineteen twenty-two?' "Do you have any relatives still living in Turkey?" ''Not anymore?' Luce looked disappointed. He had one arm of his glasses in his

mouth, and was chewing on it. Possibly he was imagining what it would be like to discover a whole new population of carriers of the 5-alpha-reductase mutation. He had to content himself with discov- enng me.

He put his glasses back on. "The treatment I'd recommend for your daughter is ~ofold. First, hormone injections. Second, cos- metic surgery. The hormone treatments will initiate breast develop- ment and enhance her female secondary sex characteristics. The surgery will malce Callie look exactly lilce the girl she feels herself to be. In fact, she will be that girl. Her outside and inside will conform. She will look lilce a normal girl. Nobody will be able to tell a thing. And then Callie can go on and enjoy her life."

Milton's brow was still furrowed with concentration but from his eyes there was light appearing, rays of relief. He turned toward Tessie and patted her leg.

But in a timid, brealcing voice Tessie asked, 'Will she be able to have children?"

Luce paused only a second. "I'm afraid not, Mrs. Stephanides. Callie will never menstruate?'

~'But she's been menstruating for a few months now;' Tessie ob- jected.

"I'm afraid that's impossible. Possibly there was some bleeding from another source:'

Tessie's eyes filled with tears. She looked away. ''I just got a postcard from a former patient;' Luce said consol-

ingly. "She had a condition similar to your daughter's. She's married now. She and her husband adopted two kids and they're as happy as can be. She plays in the Cleveland Orchestra. Bassoon?'

There was a silence, until Milton asked, "Is that it, Doctor? You do this one surgery and we can talce her home?''

"We may have to do additional surgery at alater date. But the im- mediate answer to your question is yes. After the procedure, she can go home?'

''How long will she be in the hospital?" "Only overnight?' It was not a difficult decision, especially as Luce had framed it. A

single surgery and some injections would end the nightmare and give my parents back their daughter, their Calliope, intact. The same en- ticement that had led my grandparents to do the unthinkable now of- fered itself to Milton and Tessie. No one would know. No one would ever know.

While my parents were being given a crash course in gonadogenesis, I-still officially Calliope-was doing some homework mysel£ In the Reading Room of the New York Public Library I was looking up something in the dictionary. Dr. Luce was correct in thinking that his conversations with colleagues and medical students were over my head. I didn't know what "5-alpha-reductase" meant, or "gynecomas- tia;' or "inguinal canal?' But Luce had underestimated my abilities, too. He didn't talce into consideration the rigorous curriculum at iny prep school. He didn't allow for my excellent research and study skills. Most of all, he didn't factor in the power of my Latin teachers, Miss Barrie and Miss Silber. So now, as my Wallabees made squish- ing sounds between the reading tables, as a few men looked up from their books to see what was coming and then looked down ( the world was no longer full of eyes), I heard Miss Barrie's voice in my ear. "Infants, define this word for me: hypospadias. Use your Greek or Latin roots?'

The little schoolgirl in my head wriggled in her desk, hand raised high. ''Yes, Calliope?" Miss Barrie called on me.

"Hypo. Below or beneath. Like 'hypodermic?" "Brilliant. And spadias?" ''Um um .. ?' "Can anyone come to our poor muse's aid?" But, in the classroom of my brain, no one could. So that was why

I was here. Because I knew that I had something below or beneath but I didn't know what that something was.

I had never seen such a big dictionary before. The Webster's at the New York Public Library stood in the same relation to other dictio- naries of my acquaintance as the E:rnpire State Building did to other buildings. It was an ancient, medieval-looking thing, bound in brown leather that brought to mind a falconer's gauntlet. The pages were gilded lilce the Bible's. ·

Flipping pages through the alphabet, past cantabile to eryngo, past fandango to formicate (that's with an m), past hypertonia to hyposensi- tiv#y, and there it was:

hypospadias New Latin, from Greek, man with hypospadias fr. hypo- + prob from spadon, eunuch, fr. span, to tear, pluck, pull, draw. -An abnormality of the penis in which the urethra opens on its under surface. See synonyms at EUN u c H.

I did as instructed and got

eunuch -1. A castrated man; especially, one of those who were employed as harem attendants or functionaries in certain Oriental courts. 2. A man whose testes have not developed. See synonyms at H_ERMAPHRODITE.

Following where the trail led, I finally reached

hermaphrodite -1. One having the sex organs and many of the secondary sex characteristics of both male and female. 2. Anything comprised of a combination of diverse or contra- dictory elements. See synonyms at MONSTER.

And that is where I stopped. And looked up, to see if anyone was watching. The vast Reading Room thrummed with silent energy:

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people thinking, writing. The painted ceiling bellied overhead like a sail, and down below the green desk lamps glowed, illuminating faces bent over books. I was stooping over mine, my hair falling onto the pages, covering up the definition of myself. My lime green coat was hanging open. I had an appointment with Luce later in the day and my hair was washed, my underpants fresh. My bladder was full and I crossed my legs, putting off a trip to the bathroom. Fear was stabbing me. I longed to be held, caressed, and that was impossible. I laid my hand on the dictionary and looked at it. Slender, leaf-shaped, it had a braided rope ring on one finger, a gift from the Object. The rope was getting dirty. I looked at my pretty hand and then pulled it away and faced the word again.

There it was, monster, in black and white, in a battered dictionary in a great city library. A venerable, old book, the shape and size of a headstone, with yellowing pages that bore marks of the multitudes who had consulted them before me. There were pencil scrawls and ink stains, dried blood, snack crllflbs; and the leather binding itself was secured to the lectern by a chain. Here was a book that contained the collected knowledge of the past while giving evidence of present social conditions. The chain suggested that some library visitors might take it upon themselves to see that the dictionary circulated. The dictionary contained every word in the English language but the chain knew only a few. It knew thief and steal and, maybe, purwined. The chain spoke of poverty and mistrust and inequaHty and decadence. Callie herself was holding on to this chain now. She was tugging on it, winding it around her hand so that her fingers went white, as she stared down at that word. Monster. Still there. It had not moved. And she wasn't reading this word on the wall of her old bathroom stall. There was graffiti in Webster's but the synonym wasrrt part of it. The synonym was official, authoritative; it was the verdict that the culture gave on a person lilce her. Monster. That was what she was. That was what Dr. Luce and his colleagues had been saying. It explained so much, really. It explained her mother crying in the next room. It ex- plained the false cheer in Milton's voice. It explained why her parents had brought her to New York, so that the doctors could work in se- cret. It explained the photographs, too. What did people do when they came upon Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster? They tried to get a picture. For a second Callie saw herself that way. As a lumbering, shaggy creature pausing at the edge of woods. As a humped con-

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volvulus rearing its dragon's head from an icy lake. Her eyes were fill- ing now, making the print swim, and she turned away and hurried out of the library.

But the synonym pursued her. All the way out the door and down the steps between the stone lions, Webster's Dictionary kept calling after her, Monster., Monster! The bright banners hanging from the tympanum proclaimed the word. The definition inserted itself into billboards and the ads on passing buses. On Fifth Avenue a cab was pulling up. Her father jumped out, smiling and waving. When Callie saw him, her heart lifted. The voice of Webster's stopped speaking in her head. Her father wouldn't be smiling like that unless the news from the doctor had been good. Callie laughed and sprinted down the library steps, almost tripping. Her emotions soared for the time it took to reach the street, maybe five or eight seconds. But coming closer to Milton, she learned something about medical reports. The more people smile, the worse the news. Milton grinned at her, per- spiring in pinstripes, and once again the tragedy cuff link glinted in the sun.

They knew. Her parents knew she was a monster. And yet here was Milton, opening the car door for her; here was Tessie, inside, smiling as Callie climbed in. The cab took them to a restaurant and soon the three of them were looking over menus and ordering food.

Milton waited until the drinks were served. Then, somewhat for- mally, he began. ''Your mother and I had a little chat with the doctor this morning, as you are aware. The good news is that you'll be back at home this week. You won't miss much school. Now for the bad news. Are you ready for the bad news, Cal?"

Milton's eyes were saying that the bad news was not all that bad. "The bad news is you have to have a little operation. Very minor.

'Operation' isn't really the right word. I think the doctor called it a 'procedure.' They have to knock you out and you have to · stay overnight in the hospital. That's it. There'll be some pain but they can give you painkillers for it.''

With that, Milton rested. Tessie reached out and patted Callie's hand. "It'll be okay, honey;' she said in a thickened voice. Her eyes were watery, red.

''What kind of operation?" Callie asked her father. "Just a little cosmetic procedure. Lilce getting a mole removed."

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He reached out and playfully caught Callie's nose between his knuck- les. "Or getting your nose fixed.''

Callie pulled her head away, angry. "Don't do that!" "Sorry;' said Milton. He cleared his throat, blinking. ''What's wrong with me?" Calliope asked, and now her voice

broke. Tears were running down her cheeks. "What's wrong with me, Daddy?"

Milton's face darkened. He swallowed hard. Callie waited for him to say the word, to quote Webster's, but he didn't. He only looked at her across the table, his head low, his eyes dark, warm, sad, and full of love. There was so much love in Milton's eyes that it was impossible to look for truth.

"It's a hormonal thing, .what you've got;' he said. "I was always under the impression that men had male hormones and women had female hormones. But everybody has both, apparently.'

Still Callie waited. ''What you've got, see, is you've got a little too much of the male

hormones and not quite enough of the female hormones. So what the doctor wants to do is give you a shot every now and then to get everything working right:'

He didn't say the word. I didn't malce him. "It's a hormonal thing;' Milton repeated. "In the grand scheme of

things, no big deal.''

Luce believed that a patient of my age was capable of understanding the essentials. And so, that afternoon, he did not mince words. In his mellow, pleasing, educated voice, looking directly into my eyes, Luce declared that I was a girl whose clitoris was merely larger than those of other girls. He drew the same charts for me as he had for my par- ents. When I pressed him on the details of my surgery, he said only this: "We're going to do an operation to finish your genitalia. They're not quite finished yet and we want to finish them.''

He never mentioned anything about hypospadias, and I began to hope that the word didn't apply to me. Maybe I had talcen it out of context. Dr. Luce may have been referring to another patient. Web- ster's had said that hypospadias was an abnormality of the penis. But Dr. Luce was telling me that I had a clitoris. I understood that both these things grew out of the same fetal gonad, but that didn't matter.

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If I had a clitoris-and a specialist was telling me that I did-what could I be but a girl?

The adolescent ego is a hazy thing, amorphous, cloudlike. It wasn't difficult to pour my identity into different vessels. In a sense, I was able to take whatever form was demanded of me. I only wanted to know the dimensions. Luce was providing them. My parents sup- ported him. The prospect of having everything solved was wildly at- tractive to me, too, and while I lay on the chaise I didn't ask myself where my feelings for the Object fit in. I only wanted it all to be over. I want~d to go home and forget it had ever happened. So I listened to Luce quietly and made no objections.

He explained the·estrogen injections would induce my breasts to grow. ''You won't be Raquel Welch, but you won't be Twiggy either:' My facial hair would diminish. My voice would rise from tenor to alto. But when I asked if I would fmally get my period, Dr. Luce was frank. ''No. You won't. Ever. You won't be able to have a baby your- self, Callie. If you want to have a family, you'll have to adopt:',

I received this news calmly. Having children wasn't something I thought much about at fourteen.

There was a knock on the door, and the receptionist stud:: her head in. "Sorry, Dr. Luce. But could I bother you a minute?"

''That depends on Callie?' He smiled at me. ''You mind talcing a little break? I'll be right bade?'

''I don't mind:' "Sit there a few minutes and see if any other questions occur to

you?' He left the room. While he was gone, I didn't think of any other questions. I sat in

my chair, not thinlcing anything at all. My mind was curiously blank. It was the blankness of obedience. With the unerring instinct of chil- dren, I had surmised what my parents wanted from me. They wanted me to stay the way I was. And this was what Dr. Luce now promised.

I was brought out of my abstracted state by a salmon-colored cloud passing low in the sky. I got up and went to the window to look out at the river. I pressed my cheek against the glass to see as far south as possible, where the skyscrapers rose. I told myself that I would live in New York when I grew up. ''This is the city for me;' I said. I had begun to cry again. I tried to stop. Dabbing at my eyes, I wandered around the office and finally found myself in front of one

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of the Mughal miniatures. In the small, ebony frame, two tiny figures were malcing love. Despite the exertion implied by their activity, their 'faces looked peaceful. Their expressions showed neither strain nor ec- stasy. But of course the faces weren't the focal point. The geometry of the lovers' bodies, the graceful calligraphy of their limbs led the eye straight to the fact of their genitalia. The woman's pubic hair was like a patch of evergreen against white snow, the man's member like a redwood sprouting from it. I looked. I looked once again to see how other people were made. As I looked, I didn't take sides. I under- stood both the urgency of the man and the pleasure of the woman. My mind was no longer blanlc. It was filling with a dark knowledge.

I swung around. I wheeled and looked at Dr. Luce's desk. A file sat open there. He had left it when he hurried off.

PRELIMINARY STUDY: GENETIC XY (MALE) RAISED AS FEMALE

The following illustrative case indicates that there is no preordained correspondence between ge- netic and genital structure, or between masculine or feminine behavior and chromosomal status.

SUBJECT: Calliope Stephanides INTERVIEWER: Peter Luce, M.D.

INTRODUCTORY DATA: The patient is fourteen years old. She has lived as a female all her life. At birth, somatic appearance was of a penis so small as to appear to be a clitoris. The subject's XY karyotype was not discovered until puberty, when she began to virilize. The girl's parents at first refused to believe the doctor who delivered the news and subsequently asked for two other opinions before coming to the Gender Identity Clinic and New York Hospital Clinic.

During examination, undescended testes could be palpated. The "penis" was slightly hypospadiac, with the urethra opening on the underside. The girl has always sat to urinate like other girls. Blood tests confirmed an XY chromosomal status. In addition, blood tests revealed that the subject

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was suffering from 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome. An exploratory laparotomy was not per- formed.

A family photograph (see case file) shows her at age twelve. She appears to be a happy, healthy girl with no visible signs of tomboyishness ,, de- spite her XY karyotype. FIRST IMPRESSION: The subject's facial expression, though somewhat stern at times, is overall pleas- ant and receptive, with frequent smiling. The sub- ject often casts her eyes downward in a modest or coy manner. She is feminine in her movements and gestures, and the slight gracelessness of her walk is in keeping with females of her generation. Though due to her height some people may find the subject's gender at first glance somewhat indeter- minate, any prolonged ~bservation would result in a decision that she was indeed a girl. Her voice, in fact, has a soft, breathy quality. She inclines her head to listen when another person speaks and does not hold forth or assert her opinions in a bullying manner characteristic of males. She often makes humorous remarks. FAMILY: The girl's parents are fairly typical Mid- westerners of the World War II generation. The father identifies himself as a Republican. The mother is a friendly, intelligent, and caring per- son, perhaps slightly prone to depression or neu- rosis. She accedes to the subservient wifely role typical of women of her generation. ,The father only came to the Clinic twice, citing busin'ess obligations, but from those two meetings it is apparent that he is a dominating presence, a "self-made" man and former naval officer. In addi- tion, the subject has been raised in the Greek Or- thodox tradition, with its strongly sex-defined roles. In general the parents seem assimilationist and very "all-American" in their outlook, but the presence of this deeper ethnic identity .should not be overlooked. SEXUAL FUNCTION: The subject reports engaging in childhood sexual play with other children, in every case of which she acted as the feminine partner, usually pulling up her dress and letting a boy simulate coition atop her. She experienced

pleasurable erotosexual sensations by position- ing herself by the water jets of a neighbor's swimming pool. She masturbated frequently from a young age.

The subject has had no serious boyfriends, but this may be due to her attending an all-girls s.chool or from a feeling of shame about her body. The subject is aware of the abnormal appearance of her genitalia and has gone to great lengths in the locker room and other communal dressing areas to avoid being seen naked. Nevertheless, she reports having had sexual intercourse, one time only, with the brother of her best friend, an experience she found painful but which was successful from the point of view of teenage romantic exploration. INTERVIEW: The subject spoke in rapid bursts, clearly and articulately but with the occasional breathlessness associated with anxiety. Speech patterning and characteristics appeared to be fem- inine in terms of oscillation of pitch and direct eye contact. She expresses sexual interest in males exclusively.

CONCLUSION: In speech, mannerisms, and dress, the subject manifests a feminine gender identity and role, despite a contrary chromosomal status.

It is clear by this that sex of rearing, rather than genetic determinants, plays a greater role in the establishment of gender identity.

As the girl's gender identity was firmly estab- lished as female at the time her condition was discovered, a decision to implement feminizing sur- gery along with corresponding hormonal treatments seems correct. To leave the genit'ais as they are today would expose her to ail manner of humilia- tion. Though it is possible that the surgery may result in partial or total loss of erotosexual sensation, sexual pleasure is only one factor in a happy life. The ability to marry and pass as a normal woman in society are also important goals, both of which will not be possible without femi- nizing surgery and hormone treatment. Also, it is hoped that new methods of surgery will minimize the effects of erotosexual dysfunction brought about by surgeries in the past, when feminizing surgery was in its infancy.

That evening, when my mother and I got back to the hotel, Milton had a surprise. Tickets to a Broadway musical. I acted excited but later, after dinner, crawled into my parents' bed, claiming I was too tired to go.

"Too tired?" Milton said. ''What do you mean you're too tired?" ''That's okay, honeY:' said Tessie. ''You don't have to go?' "Supposed to be a good show, Cal;' "Is Ethel Merman in it?" I asked. ''No, smart-ass;' Milton said, smiling. ''Ethel Merman is not in it.

She's not on Broadway right now. So we're seeing something with Carol Channing. She's pretty good, too. Why don't you come along?"

''No thanks;' I said. "Okay, then. You're missing out?' They started to go. "Bye, honey;' my mother said. Suddenly I jumped out of bed and ran to Tessie, hugging her. ''What's this for?" she asked. My eyes brimmed with tears. Tessie took them to be tears of relief ·

at everything we'd been through. In the narrow entryway carved from a former suite, cockeyed, dim, the two of us stood hugging and crymg.

When they were gone, I got my suitcase from the closet. Then, looking at the turquoise flowers, I exchanged it for my father's suit- case, a gray Samsonite. I left my skirts and my Fair Isle sweater in the dresser drawers. I packed only the darker garments, a blue crew neck, the alligator shirts, and my corduroys. The brassiere I abandoned, too. For the time being, I held on to my socks and panties, and I ~ossed in my toiletry case entire. When I was finished, I searched in Milton's garment bag for the cash he'd hidden there. The wad was hlrly large and came to nearly three hundred dollars.

It wasn't all Dr. Luce's fault. I had lied to him about many things. :ris decision was based on false data. But he had been false in turn.

On a piece of stationery, I left a note for my parents.

Dear Mom and Dad, I know you're only trying to do what's best for me, but I

don't think anyone knows for sure what's best. I love you and don't want to be a problem, so I've · decided to go away. I

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know you'll say I'm not a problem, but I know I am. If you want to know why I'm doing this, you should ask Dr. Luce, who is a big liar! I am not a girl. I'm a boy. That's what I found out today. So I'm going where no one knows me. Everyone in Grosse Pointe will talk when they find out.

Sorry I took your money, Dad, but I promise to pay you back someday, with interest.

" Please don't worry about me. I will be ALL RIG HT!

Despite its content, I signed this declaration to my parents: "Callie?' It was the last time I was ever their daughter.

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