Middlesex

The doctors shook my hand. It was their first bit of data: my handshake. Dr. Craig squeezed hard, Winters less so. They were careful about not seeming too eager. Like men meeting a fashion model, they trained their eyes away from my body and pretended to be interested 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 proclaiming: Here she is. My star 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 study,” said Craig.

“Among the Sambia, right?” asked Winters.

“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 organized 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.

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 vaginal 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 running. 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 trying 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 reasons 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.

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.