Middlesex

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 like staring at the ground and realizing, suddenly, that it is swarming with ants. The restful doctor’s office was churning with activity. The paperweight 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 silk 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 snakes on the spine, was called Erotosexual Pair Bonding. There was a purple, pamphlety thing entitled Ritualized Homosexuality: Three Field Studies. On the desk itself, with a bookmark in it, was a manual called Hap-Penis: Surgical Techniques 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 specialist my parents had brought me to see. (And, worse, to see me.) There were sculptures, too. Reproductions from the temple at Kujaraho 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 like 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.

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 ankle 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 nothing 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 Wild Boy of Aveyron, was me, Calliope Stephanides, 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, speaking primarily to my parents, gaining their confidence, Luce was nevertheless making mental notes. He registered my tenor voice. He noted that I sat 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.

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 office, 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.