None of the Above(33)

“Just, please . . . no pictures of naked girls with bars over their eyes.” I thought of the pictures of “AIS physiology” on Wikipedia.

“Come again?” Ms. Diaz asked.

“Never mind,” I said.

When I got home, I called Mohawk Valley Urology Associates. It took three minutes of navigating an automated telephone line, and another twenty minutes waiting for her to call me back, but I finally got hold of Dr. Cheng.

“Hello, Kristin,” she said. She sounded harried. “My nurse said you have a problem?”

I almost laughed out loud, almost told her that yes, I had a problem: I had f*cking testicles instead of ovaries, and when was she going to do something about it?

But instead, that politeness kicked in again, and I managed to ask a question that no teenage girl should ever have to ask, in a measured tone that would’ve made my mother proud.

“Yes,” I said. “Could I please schedule surgery as soon as possible to remove my testicles?”





CHAPTER 18


I got lucky. Dr. Cheng had a last-minute cancellation and she squeezed me in for Wednesday the following week, but not before bringing me in to her office to tell me and my dad, face-to-face, what I was getting into.

“Once your testicles are removed, you’ll have to take daily estrogen to replace your hormones.”

A pill every day.

“While most girls do well with medication, sometimes testosterone deprivation after surgery causes hot flashes, depression, and mood swings until we get the dosing right.”

Eighteen years old, and going through the Change. At least Aunt Carla and I would have something to talk about. I should have gotten a menopausal woman costume for Halloween, not that I’d be trick-or-treating tomorrow.

“For these reasons, a lot of people in the intersex world are very passionate against gonadectomy.”

I’d seen a couple of articles, and couldn’t really understand why some people were so militant against surgery. In little babies, maybe I could see delaying an operation until they were older and could make their own decision. But once you understood what you were . . . how could someone not want to be fixed?

I couldn’t conceive of a world in which I wasn’t broken.

“Finally,” Dr. Cheng said, “on top of the potential complications from surgery—namely bleeding, infection, and pain—I’d be remiss if I didn’t warm you that estrogen does have side effects. It can cause weight gain. Blood clots. Headaches. Fluid retention. And there’s a theoretical increased risk of breast cancer.”


At the C word, my dad flinched, and I felt my heart race. Dr. Cheng just sighed and brought over a form for me to sign. “I apologize if it seems that I’m laying things on too thick. But it’s my job to make sure you’re fully informed about the risks and benefits before you give consent for the procedure.”

I thought back to that moment when it’d seemed easier to deal with cancer than with being intersex. Now, more than ever, I agreed. I couldn’t cut the Y chromosome out of each of my cells, but I could cut out those balls that everyone seemed so fixated on.

I looked at the consent form, which listed two paragraphs of complications, including brain damage or even death from anesthesia.

Without even glancing at my dad, I signed my name.

The nurse who called the night before surgery reminded me that I couldn’t eat or drink anything past midnight the day before my procedure, so by the time they rolled me back into the operating room I wanted to keel over from starvation. One of the techs had me shimmy over onto a metal table covered with bright white towels, and strapped me in. Then someone put a mask over my face that smelled like cherry bubble gum and I went to sleep.

What felt like two seconds later, I woke up feeling like a quivering ball of Jell-O. Someone had thrown a blanket over me but it didn’t cover my legs or my arms, and a man was saying, “You’re waking up from anesthesia, Kristin. The procedure’s all over. Everything went great.”

My testicles were out. I had hoped, expected even, to suddenly feel like I was a girl again. But all I felt like was an empty jar.

When I got home, Aunt Carla was already there, ready to play nursemaid. “You just lie down and relax, young lady. I’ve got a pot of nice chicken soup on the stove and some tea with lemon.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that those were cold remedies. Maybe they worked just as well for girls who’d been castrated.

Up in my room, I changed into pajamas and looked at my incisions. I had two of them, one on each side right at my panty line. I probably couldn’t wear a thong, but I might be able to get away with a normal bikini.

I ran my fingers across the red, puckered lines. Dr. Cheng had told me that she’d used dissolvable sutures and skin glue, so I could shower as soon as tonight. The skin around where she’d cut felt sore, like a muscle strain, but not truly painful.

After dinner, when I went to say good night to my dad, he was at the kitchen counter hunched over his laptop. I caught a glimpse of someone in a track uniform and peeked over his shoulder.

“I’m researching that runner Caster Semenya,” he said. “I can’t really find many specifics about the case. I mean, from the medical point of view.” He didn’t look at me, keeping his eyes on the screen. “But if anything happens with your scholarship, I think we can fight it.”